Hollow Regrets
by Diamroyal
Summary: What's the line between innocents and soldiers? No pairings. Complete. In Disdain of Mortals arc part 1 of 6.
1. Chapter One

Hollow Regrets—Ch. I

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You can't say civilization is advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way.

_Will Rogers (1879-1935)_

Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.

_Voltaire (1694-1778), on his death bed, when asked by a priest to renounce Satan_

They were on their way to a new school. Well, sort of a school. It was on the west coast of North America, far to the north, where it was bitterly cold, and the sun was just a glimmer on the horizon, never really rising for the day. The school had been set up as a hide out for aspiring OZ pilots, a basic education before they went on to bigger, better things, like Lake Victoria. They were shuffling all the "students" from installation to installation, trying to stay one step ahead of the Gundam pilots, but the higher powers in OZ didn't realize the loop hole they had given their enemy. Because they were moving the trainees around in groups and doing it at an almost constant rate, the Gundam pilots would be able to come in en masse without rousing a lot of suspicion. It had the potential to be an extremely effective operation, even more so than the Victoria incident, as they would also be in a position to discover the locations of many other trainee centers, giving them a piloting edge in the future. Once the pilots had discovered those locations, they would split up and continue on to the other schools, covering as many as possible. They would then destroy them in concert, neatly avoiding the severe intelligence measures expected to follow the destruction of just one installation. Also a benefit, the pilots would blend in with the few inevitable trainees escaping elimination, and, should all go according to plans, be able to slip out after the furor, during the transportation of said survivors.

They had traveled as a group to a checkpoint, (the only location their collective authorities had been able to unearth,) where they met up with a larger group of OZ trainees. Now, hidden within a group of twelve more similar teenagers, they were going to cover the remaining distance to the first installation in a converted semi trailer.

As they waited, the only thing that made the day bearable was the clear sunshine that came down unfiltered to flicker on them. Though they were already at the 45th latitude, they were all bundled up sufficiently, with the added support of the sun, to with stand the cold. Soon though, they would be at the 60th, with the meteorological hazard of coastal weather, and the temperatures would be dropping dramatically. Certainly, the two warmer blooded pilots were not looking forward to this mission, but even that had been thought through. Those two pilots were deemed better suited to leave once the first opportunity presented itself, to go to another trainee base. 05 would be the pilot to stay behind and eliminate the future threat in the second quadrant of the North American sector.

The truck pulled up outside of the train depot OZ had commandeered from its company, and the driver hopped out. He was a burley guy, with seamed features and a cig hanging out from the corner of his mouth. When he walked it was with a bandy-legged gait that screamed "Sarge'" to the five illegitimate teens. He ran an appraising eye over the group where they were huddled together, (though 01, 03 and 05 had shown what 04 called "a ridiculous amount" of reluctance to do so,) and snorted through his crooked nose, clearly expressing his personal opinion of what OZ was looking forward to.

"Well, lookie' what the cat drugged in." As one creature, the noble children of OZ stiffened to an indignant height, and glared daggers at this upstart who dared to insult such fine specimens of their social standing. 'Course, not one of the pilots did, in fact, 02's eyes began to shine with suppressed laughter, and 04 just looked startled. 05 puffed up just a little bit, but no where in comparison to the nobles, 03 had no reaction, and 01 just frowned a little, in puzzlement. Which didn't help with the 02 situation, whose mirth seemed to grow exponentially in relation to the depth of 01's frown. And all of this was caught by "Sarge'", whose own age-clouded eyes began to twinkle.

"Yep, thas' right, sweetums, I'm your commandin' officer from now 'til we reach the 'Port, where your 'commandant' will relieve me of my duty. Name's Lieutenant Oscar, but ever'one jus' calls me Worser, 'cuz I must be worser n' Satan for 'em to let me live wit' dis face!"

02 just couldn't help it anymore, and as his glee overcame his Olympian efforts of containment, the Lieutenant's face folded into a grimace, his own semblance of a smile, and the cig that he still had in his mouth began to move randomly, as though he were chewing on it with what were sure to be yellowed, uneven teeth.

"Liked that, did ya' kid? What's your moniker?"

Holding his stomach with one hand to assure nothing came loose while he vainly tried to regain control over his howling laughter, 02 stumbled up to the 'tenant, one hand raised in anticipation for his salute. He reached a semblance of standing as he came in front of Worser, and gave his snappy observance. "Sir, Trainee Donald MacEvens reporting, sir." That done, he put the last remnants of his hilarity back into his head, (a place to traumatize even his current jaded audience,) stood at attention, (that first of all military skills to be drilled into any troops, future officers or not,) and awaited remarks.

When the OZ officer just stared at him for nearly a full minute, then shifted his gaze onto the still huddled group behind him, even stalwart Duo became just a tad nervous. Fortunately for him, Worser's attention had been lifted from him.

"Hmph." He studied them all for a further minute then opened his mouth in a yawn, revealing that he did indeed have a very bad dental situation. Duo, though he had a front row seat, didn't flinch. "Well ladies, line up an' give me yer intros."

After looking at each other they scrambled into a rough line.

"Sir, Aaron Keller, reporting, sir."

"Sir, Daniel Gregory Allans, reporting, sir."

The lieutenant waved a hand. "Nah, start over; I wan' 'em in alphabetic by last name."

It took them about five minutes, but they finally did it. Actually, it would have taken them longer, but Quatre was kind enough to point out that their last names were posted on their uniforms. After that, it didn't take very long. Even "Donald" joined the queue, just to be safe. But this was, after all, a standard military procedure, and it took them barely any time at all to run through the actual duty.

"Ookay then. Now that's done, lemme give you the par-tik-u-leers." He paused for a moment, and when he began to speak again, his voice had transformed to clear and precise. "We're heading up the edge of Western North America, through what use to be the top of the Continental United States, into the similar area of British Columbia, and then back into the former United States, un-continental, Alaska. At this time, that is all you have been authorized to know, though you will be informed of your exact coordinates when we get within one standard hour of our destination." That said, he slipped back into his rougher speech. "And that, ladies, is 'bout 49 hours straight drivin' time down the road. Questions?"

One of the trainees, a red-headed boy that stood nearly a whole head above even Trowa, raised his hand. When Worser called upon him, his voice came out at a decided disadvantage to his frame, squeaking out a thready, changing tenor, which had somehow gone un-noticed when he had found refuge in the normal introduction—something which, if you had any brains anyway, all came out in a monotone from memorizing it, so you didn't even have to think about it, or how your voice would sound while giving it. "Sir, if it's such a long drive, why didn't we fly closer in? Wouldn't that have sped up the process by a considerable margin?"

"Ha, you'd think so, maybe, but that might also get you dead, kid. Those Gundam pilots 'ev been moniterin' the air ways somethin' awful, and the first few times we tried that, we lost 'bout fifty kids like yerselves, not to mention the installations they were comin' from _and_ goin' to. So no, we drive. Any _other_ questions? No? Well then, find a setta civvies, take 'em to th' head and we'll get this show on th' road. I'll brief ya' some more in the truck. Now move!"

When all the trainees clambered up the back of the truck, now dressed in their own clothes, (the pilots, thank god, had changed their usual "uniforms" enough to hopefully not be noticed on a description of them,) they were faced with their living quarters for the next few days: rough, nearly unfinished walls, sparse furnishings mainly involving the ubiquitous bunks, boxes of rations and piles of nutrition bars. Most interesting though was the enormous volume of heavy woolen blankets that were stacked in nearly every available space.

The head of the trailer carried the heaviest modifications away from standard. The entire rig had been re-designed with an umbilicus to connect the cab of the tractor with the trailer, allowing access while moving. This made it easier for driver changes, cutting the stopping time, and the only thing that would dictate those would be fuel consumption. The other major change was a co-pilot set up, where the drivers could switch while still in motion, with a short period of time on an auto-pilot to allow adjustments between drivers.

"Settle down, pick a cot and grab a blanket. Here's the deal: this is gonna be a rough ride. One, we're being looked for, so the civvies. Two, we're makin' tracks, so the only stops are gonna be fer fuel, and then, no bathroom. We're all gents here, so act like it an' use the head at the front, don't whine 'bout it like the kids y'are. And three, we're goin' farther North, so it's gonna get down right chilly. There're 'nough blankies ta go 'round, so no hoardin', tho' ya' might wanna sep'rate in ta' groups, an' huddle up fer heat. Tha's it, folks, so someone batten the hatch an' we'll blow this popstand." Worser went up to the hotseat, strapped in and put the idling diesel into gear while several of the boys pulled the rear end closed, hooked it secure, and locked it from the inside.

It took them all a while before they were used to the differences in the ride; it was bumpy, not as if there were no shocks, but more like they were designed for a much, much heavier load. Also, the noise of the engine was loud, a great rumble that was hard to resign to the background. Whenever anyone spoke it echoed off of the rough walls, and the whistling of air resistance whined through any conversation. But humans are very adaptable creatures, and soon all of the trainees were settling in for their trip. The five Gundam pilots sat together, and absorbed everything around them, all of them automatically cataloguing everything and anything new they came across.

It was an uneasy group, the crowd of teenagers that were hunkered down in that converted trailer. With the exception of the three pilots who grew up with no social status, or a level that could not even be considered an actual part of society, every single young man there had been raised with thoughts of the future, and more importantly, their families' place in that future, and those thoughts were constantly ruling their every action. For the most part, they were the second and third sons, and though they too had gone through the same training in leadership and business and politics as their older siblings, they knew from a very early age that the military was the only way they could truly make a difference, the only way for them to be taken on their own footing, rather than being cast in someone else's shadow. But now, they were running, literally for their lives, hiding to fight for the future, and that thought could only bow their heads with shame, and silence their attempts to form new friendships among their new comrades. So the atmosphere that pervaded the air was gloomy, full of doubts and half-formulated thoughts of failure. Even their escort, a group of nine OZ foot soldiers, was oppressed by it, and their normal diversions didn't emerge with the alacrity that was usually so evident in any group of bored soldiers.

But Duo could only contain himself for so long before his active mind began to rebel against the lack of purpose and the seemingly endless wait. They were on the road for only forty-five minutes before he was up and running. While his audience of four Gundam pilots, twelve aristocratic trainees and nine soldiers watched, he investigated every corner and box, sifted through the piles of blankets for nearly a dozen that met his exacting standards, (which, when he brought them to the other four pilots, seemed identical to any of the other blankets,) used the head, and stock-piled another couple dozen ration packets and nutrition bars, merrily humming off tune ditties all the while. But even this was only a very temporary diversion, and soon, he was once again sitting, extremely bored, between Heero and Quatre. After an hour and a half of driving, many of the passengers were settling down on the various bunks to sleep. They weren't the first to do so. Wufei was in a meditative position and had been almost from the beginning, and Trowa was sitting perfectly still, his back up against a pile of blankets, his head tucked to his chest and soft sounds of breathing issued forth in time to the slight rise and fall of the hair hanging in front of his face.

The other three were still sitting side by side, but they too were beginning to show signs of relaxation, a slight movement towards a more horizontal position, and a drooping of the eyelids. In fact, the only thing that seemed to be keeping 01 and 04 from sleep was the laborious sighs that Duo was exhaling every thirty seconds. When Quatre, who had been counting them in his own boredom, reached fifty, he decided to do something about it.

His voice, when he spoke, was still very quiet, but there was a thread of that particular brand of steel in it that revealed his annoyance. "Okay, MacEvens, that's enough. Either come up with something to do that won't disturb everyone, or go find somewhere and go to sleep."

Duo sighed again, "There isn't anything to do, 'cause they made me leave all my stuff. And I had that coffee, so I'm just not tired. I mean, I don't even have a pack of cards or music, just my clothes and stuff like that."

"Well, maybe I have something in my duffle. Let's check, 'k?" But that was to no avail, as Quatre, too, had been forced to stash any un-necessary baggage in one of Sandrock's compartments. They did find some paper and a few carbon pencils, so they vacated the cot in favor of the floor, where they made paper chess and checker pieces to play with, weighting them down with spare change so they didn't flutter around with every bump the truck hit. When they moved Heero promptly lay down in their vacated spots and joined the other sleepers.

They played checkers first, but Duo wasn't that great at it, and Quatre kept winning, and Duo was soon getting bored again. So it was only about forty minutes before they switched to chess, and Duo's boat really sank. It took him about five minutes to figure out how bad, but it was three games and two and half hours later before he decided he needed help.

Help came forth in the form of Heero, who had woken up and had been watching Duo's latest stubborn but futile attempt for ten minutes before Duo looked up and saw a slight glimmer of blue.

"Hy, you're awake!" Heero groaned: he'd been caught, and he was in for it. "Help me out here, Q's killin' me."

Quatre's mouth opened as if he wanted to protest, but his eyes narrowed a second later as he studied Heero's face. Duo, looking at him, could tell that he was thinking hard, because he had snagged his lower lip in his teeth and was worrying at one corner of it, which would have really disturbed Duo, but Quatre never did it hard enough to draw blood, it just always ended up looking like he'd spent the last few hours in some serious extra-curricular activities.

Heero, who had shifted around on the cot to hang over the other two, looked into Quatre's face, and raised his eyebrows in question. Coming to an internal decision, the young billionaire met Heero's eyes, and he nodded once, hard. "Fine, I'll play both of you."

"Hn." Heero's eloquent answer came a second before his hand snaked out, and he moved for Duo. "Really, Quinn, you'll find I'm a much more difficult opponent than him."

Quatre just smiled sweetly at him, giving that angelic appearance only tow heads seemed to be able to pull off with true success, and made his next move.

The game became a silent battle of wills, both the players moving with assurance as Duo looked on, trying to keep up, trying to assimilate a new skill into his repertoire. The game ended abruptly in only three minutes, when Quatre drove a strike into Heero's defenses in a risky but ultimately effective move. It was so cunningly done that not even Heero realized the game was over, not until Quatre broke through his concentration with a whispered "Check mate", and Heero sat there for a second, his hand already out-stretched to move his next piece.

Slowly a look of dawning amazement and what could almost be labeled as awe spread across his normally shuttered features. He just stared at the makeshift game board as his mind tried to catch up with time and when he raised his eyes to Quatre's, where he sat calmly beside the cot, his eyes were wide with his thoughts. They stared into each other's eyes while a small quirking smile crept across the blonde's face.

"Let's go again." Heero's voice was harsh, and his eyes had hardened.

Quatre, still smiling, nodded slightly, in acceptance of the stubborn challenge.

Duo, who had watched the exchange silently, moved quickly when Heero's attention shot to him, and the youth's eyes made a gesture to give up his seat. Oh, yes, Duo moved, but only to carefully wake the other pilots.

"Hey, Lin, Tristan, wake up." He paused for a second, looking at Wufei, still sitting there. "Well, whatever, but you guys have got to see this."

Wufei's lids snapped up, his hard black eyes glaring.

"MacEvens, go away. Some of us were perfectly content not seeing whatever new fickle form of entertainment has now caught your useless attention." His eyes closed again, the only body part he had moved, (aside from his mouth,) in his Duo-Dress Down.

Duo sighed, but knew that however much he might complain, he really would want to see this. So he said so. "Come on, just trust me, you have to come over and see what Quinn and Hy are doing."

A snarl chased its way across Wufei's countenance. "Fine! But after I've seen it, I'm going to pound your miserable hide into the floor!"

The boy who called himself Death nearly jumped in his glee. "Okay." He then turned to wake up Trowa, but there was no need. The circus performer had already taken up a position on one of the bunks adjacent to the silent chess combatants. Duo grabbed Wufei's arm and dragged him over too, ignoring the nearly animal noises coming from behind him.

But once he had gotten the Chinese boy close enough for Wufei to see what was going on, he no longer had to pull. Wufei sat down next to Trowa, and Duo launched himself into the other cot, sprawled out comfortably.

Luckily for them, Quatre had seen what Duo was doing, and had forestalled the start of the match, waiting for them to get settled. But they had barely been there for a second before the blonde moved his little "white" piece forward, and the two were engaged in a truly ferocious battle of dominance.

Had any of the other passengers paid any attention to them, they would have been amazed at the expressions on any of the pilot's faces. Quatre's usual animation had vanished, replaced by slits of eyes and thinned lips; Heero was completely blank, and his arm reached out in perfect motion, with not a single un-necessary movement. Trowa sat still, his eyes going back between their faces, as if he could send his piercing green eyes through to their minds, and see their next move. He watched them more than the board, but he studied all of it carefully. Duo's face had split into a manic grin, his eyes shadowed and his teeth gleaming in his parody of mirth as his eyes flickered constantly in motion, skipping like a grasshopper from one thing to the next, even moving over each of his fellow observers where they sat across from him. Wufei gave no attention to anything but the paper game board, his gaze so intense it was almost possible to think it was going to combust spontaneously in the next moment, gaining its momentum from his glare alone.

The battle waged on for nearly an hour, as each piece was carefully selected to join the intrigue of the game. Silence reigned and every creak and bump, every rumble of the engine, all the snores and whimpers from the people sleeping around them could be heard.

The tension built up as the game began to clear of pieces. Even Duo, with his lesser skills in the game, could feel the end coming, a feeling as if the solution to the war of wills was viable, a living breathing organism, fed by the competitive nature of the two boys.

It was because of their very silence that Duo was able to hear the faintest of scuffles, and catch such a small movement at the very edge of his vision. The others were concentrating so hard that Worser was very, very far within their senses' perimeter when Duo noticed him.

Before his thoughts could even begin to comprehend his instincts, his head swung around, his braid swept across the floor, right through the middle of the chess board, knocking the pieces out of order, and he rolled to his feet in an easy motion that took less time than a blink, but looked as natural as a breath.

"Sir! I thought you were driving." Standing as he was, halfway between at ease and a slouch, he was in a perfect spot to block any view the Lieutenant might have had of the floor in between the two bunks. The four others just blinked in astonishment as the object of their concentration was ruined. Not a single one of them said a word or moved once Duo had made his little maneuver. Certainly, they were annoyed with the braided idiot for wrecking the board, but it took them all a moment to refocus their usually able minds around something else, so involving had the game been. When they did manage to shift their collective attention, it was to look up at Duo's back and the 'tenant who stood over him.

"I was. Got a special set up, so's we can switch drivers without stopping." Worser stopped for a mere moment, that length of time that any accomplished evasion artist recognizes as the pause that's supposed to divert attention, and make unwary mouths flap. "So what'cha boys doin' ta' keep yerselves busy?" And he leaned his swarthy head a little to the side, trying to get an angle on the floor. "Play'n a game?"

But it would take a much more talented interrogator than the man in front of him to make Duo reveal anything. "Yup, poor man's chess, just like we used to play at home. I think my buddy Quinn here is gettin' his butt kicked by Hy. That guy is down right vicious."

The other boys, hearing Duo's little speech, all glanced at each other. For some reason, Duo was weaving a web of half-truths that were laced with little hints. Duo didn't have a home. He never had. And he didn't lie. And it had been painfully obvious before he had messed up the board that neither one of the players was "getting his butt kicked", that they had in fact been almost at a stand still. So what was Duo trying to tell them?

"Hmm. Yah, chess is like that. You can't hide in a chess game." Again, that infinitesimal pause. "Hey, I'm not too bad, maybe I could lend a hand?"

Duo didn't even pause. "Sure, maybe you could. Let's take a look." And he twirled around on the tips of his toes, moving aside to let the officer get a good look at the floor. But as Duo looked down, he gave a world class performance of someone disappointed and contrite.

"Oh, man guys, am I sorry. It's my stupid hair, I didn't mean to." He rubbed the back of his neck and his shoulders slumped.

"Well, that's too bad. S'pose I won't be helpin' out after all." The grimace that was his excuse of a smile spread across Worser's weathered face. "You guys can always start over, right?"

Quatre looked up with his face on full innocence mode. "Sure can. But I think I'll wait awhile before I subject myself to that again. Apparently I'm only a good player when I'm playing someone other than Hy here. 'Sides, I'm really thinking about taking a breather, maybe getting some sleep."

With the exceptional timing that made him such a good performer, Trowa let out an expansive yawn. "I think I agree with you there, Quinn." He made a further point by stretching his long arms over his head and his legs out in the aisle between the end of the bunks and the other wall of the trailer.

"Mn hmm, I'm sackin' out too." Duo looked at the two as yet silent terrorists, who, looking back at him, also joined into the act, nodding "sleepily", yawning, and making the motions of boys getting ready to find places to lay their growing bones.

Worser watched them with the falsely indulgent look of a superior officer, then, when it became obvious that they boys were really going to take advantage of the bunks, he turned around to walk away, but stopped at the last moment as Duo complained loudly about how cold it was.

"Ya' know, if'n ya' moved those bunks closer t'gether, you'll getta lil' more heat."

Duo's whole face brightened, giving a good impression of the kid he was supposed to still be. "Really?"

"Yep, works lik'a charm. And since you guys are gonna sleep, I'm turnin' down the lights." And with that last note, Worser really did walk away, to find his own place to rest.

Duo didn't stop fussing with the bunks and blankets until the OZ officer had disappeared back into the forward compartment, supposedly to a bunk he had up there. When his instincts told him the coast was clear, his muscles immediately relaxed, and it was only then that the others truly realized how very tense he had been, even beyond the clues they had gotten from his earlier behavior.

So after the bunks were all arranged to his liking, (which the other's noted as being the most defensible positioning available under the circumstances,) they cornered him where he was sitting on the edge of one. They ended up in a set up very similar to what they had had earlier, during the chess match.

"Okay, talk." Always to the point, was Heero.

Duo's violet eyes rolled around the guys sitting there. "I dunno, but something about that just ran up my spine, and I reacted, that's all." His voice expressed how much at a loss he was.

Even Quatre's usually relaxed face frowned in thought, but it was Trowa who broke the pondering silence.

"He did seem rather interested in the game, didn't he? Too interested for how casual he tried to act."

They all nodded. He had been more than casually interested in a game supposedly being played just to pass the time. After all, they knew that though they might have been concentrating hard, they could've been concentrating on anything, and even then, it really wasn't unusual for the average person to concentrate on board games under normal conditions.

Wufei voiced the thought on all of their minds. "He bears watching, that's for sure."

Again, they all nodded, and, reaching a silent accord, they began to move off, but not before Duo got in the last word of the "day".

"Especially if you consider the fact that he's just as noble as any other OZ officer out there. Remember, we all saw his file."

On that observation, four of them settled down into their rearranged bunks, and Trowa took first watch, as they all bundled up in several blankets to stave off the chill. Each of them had various weapons hidden about them, though they all fervently hoped that in the morning, when they were shaken awake, they wouldn't blow their respective covers by pulling any of them.

With all the traveling they were so very used to doing, it didn't take any of them long to be lulled into sleep by the rumbling movement of the truck, and soon all of the sleeping boys had slipped down that dark tunnel of dreams that gave these young men both terrors worse than their waking deeds, and hope of a future none of them could really believe in.


	2. Chapter Two

Hollow Regrets—Ch. II

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The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must—never for sport.

_From the notebooks of Lazarus Long, care of Robert A. Heinlein_

Wufei had the third watch, he was sitting on "his" cot, reading something in Chinese, when Quatre, the last one to wake up, blinked the last remnants of sleep from his eyes. When the blond stood up, the other boys stopped what they were doing to put the bunks back into order. Then Heero went back to his sit-ups, Trowa was playing with a pack of cards he must have had somewhere, Wufei back to his book. Duo, he hadn't seen yet, perhaps he was using the head. But Quatre, needing to use it, found the compartment empty, no Duo. As he came back out, already turned to go back to the others, he was surprised to hear Duo's voice from behind him, in the tractor.

"...you from?" Quatre envied Duo's honest curiosity. He was like a cat, always finding out everything about anything. He did it with people, machines and places.

An unintelligible rumble indicated to Quatre that Duo's current information quarry was Worser. He shook his head. _Okay, so maybe it isn't always honest curiosity._ With his head still shaking, he moved back to the others.

"So where're you from?" Sitting sideways in the co-pilot's seat, Duo's animated eyes were centered on Worser, who was driving.

"Sheesh, kid, give it a break. D'you ever stop?" The officer's voice growing rougher with exasperation.

"Nope, just ask Hy. So, where're ya' from?" Putting on a smashing grin, Duo re-folded his cramping legs in the seat.

Shooting the teen a look of annoyance, Worser gave into the inevitable. "This city to the east of here, used ta' be called Detroit," he glanced at the kid. "My turn: how come no one's made you cut that thing off?"

Duo didn't need any true reference to tell him what the officer was talking about. He pulled his braid over his shoulder to look at it. The gold-shot brown twisted, and with the bright sun shining in the cab, it shined so bright it could almost be called sparkling. He ran his hands over it once or twice, then looked up at the 'tenant. "I never gave 'em the chance." His voice had lost its impish spirit, the tone swallowed whole by his hands running gently down the curves of his braid.

"Hmph. What kind of answer's that?"

"A true one. Don't ya' know, I never lie." This time the grin was cheeky, full of vinegar. "How'd you end up in OZ?"

They were just cresting a hill, so Worser took the opportunity to ignore Duo for a minute, while he down-shifted. "It seemed the thing to do at the time."

"Ha! And you asked me what a vague answer was!" A quick glance got thrown at the boy as he began a small tirade. "Don't you know that anything you do seems the right thing at the time? I mean, if it wasn't, you wouldn't have done it, right?"

Worser frowned at the logic a little, but had to concede the boy's point with a nod. "Okay, so it's not an answer, but it's the absolute truth, kid. It was the best option at the time."

"What, you wouldn't choose the same thing now?" Another shift in the seat, the braid coming forward to trail down in the air, like a cat toy just waiting to happen.

"No, not today, not under these circumstances." More concentration on the road.

"Are you saying that I didn't do something very smart? That I should have avoided OZ rather than join it?" There was a note of something, dimly like arrogance in the boy's voice. Of course Duo didn't mean it, but let the man wonder at it, think he'd found a button, that childish arrogance, the childish belief that you know everything worth knowing, forget about anything else.

"No. I don't know why you did join." He glanced over, the bushes that passed as eyebrows raised in his creased face. "Which is?"

"Oh, I was ordered to." There was a slight frown that crossed the boy's face for a split second, but Duo didn't think the man had seen it before his face was cleared of it. He didn't like this mission, didn't like it at all.

"Ordered?" Worser thought about that for a second, then nodded in understanding. "Families can be like that."

Duo frowned again as a thought passed through his mind—that had sounded like a loaded statement. And he thought of a way to answer without lying. But if you thought about it, G and the sweepers were the closest thing he had to family, so he didn't have a problem. "Yeah, I suppose you could say that."

They sat in silence awhile as the mountains turned around them, and they went farther north. Then Duo shook his head like he was washing away the bad thoughts, and flashed a grin at the man driving.

"I should get back to the others. They aren't getting into enough trouble with me gone." His young body hopped up from the chair and disappeared down the "hallway" to the trailer before Worser could even have thought to respond.

Duo approached the group of boys separated from the others, as if the real trainees could sense the differences, with his usual grin plastered in place. He snagged the edge of a cot in between all of them, sort of equidistant, and talked low, barely loud enough for any of them to hear him.

"Yeah, he's interested alright, I just don't think he's goin' in the right direction." He frowned as he thought back over their short conversation. "He seems to be stressing the family point." That raised eyebrows.

"I can't imagine what he must be thinking about 'families'. I mean, around ninety-five percent of us in the corps are from the same background. There isn't much in the way of differences." Quatre's unconsciously cultured voice wouldn't be giving them away, that was for sure.

"Well, think about it. I wouldn't put it past OZ to mess around with everyone's heads." Trowa's sharp comment made perfect sense to all the boys. Who knew what Worser could be expecting? All of them could see several angles where OZ might want to exploit the power they wielded to find out more information. OZ had been using their superior information network from the very start. Just because they had officially "come out" didn't mean that they were going to stop it all now.

Duo broke up the stiltedly quiet discussion. "Well, what's there to do? And no more chess games."

It didn't take a genius to know he meant more than just chess. No games where they risked revealing too much about themselves. Trowa showed his pack of cards to Duo, who exclaimed over the oddness of them. They weren't normal playing cards, but simply stiff card-stock with no plastic veneer, woodcut illustrations, and captions on all of them, under the pictures.

Trowa called them Tarot cards—they were actually Cathy's—who used them to tell fortunes, not play games. But they were fine with Duo, because you could still use them to play like normal cards, you just had to pull about twenty-five of them out first. Heero examined the discarded ones as Trowa and Duo played mindless games of almost pure chance, like War and double solitaire.

Quatre, interested really for a lack of anything else to do, looked at the cards with Heero. As he went over each card, his mind hit on the high points of the different pictures, and he wondered what each one stood for. Wufei, pulled from his book by Quatre's musings, had apparently studied the ideas behind the cards a little bit when he was younger, in a class for the Western superstitions and cultish tendencies in his old life as a student. He remembered just enough to explain some of the meanings, but not very many, only the ones that had stuck in his mind.

"No, Death, in this case, doesn't mean Death, or dying." That caught Duo, who looked up from the double war he was engaged in. "It's more like a card for change, transformation, or something that might affect your entire life. If you want a card more representative of disaster or death, the Tower card is better. That one is sort of for catastrophe—a complete overturn, forcing a new start." Heero held another one up, called the Chariot. It was a man, standing in the back of a covered "chariot", his hands holding invisible reins to a pair of sphinxes, who were pulling him. "That one—" Wufei's forehead creased as he thought. It had been a long time since he'd studied the cards, and then, it had only been briefly. Eventually he had to shake his head. "I don't remember."

Trowa filled it in for him. "That one represents confinement, and the inner self, and the conquest of illusion, more the illusions you give yourself than anything else." Heero nodded, minutely examining the entire surface, looking at the different colors, the expression on each of the five faces: the two sphinx, the man in armor, and the two crescent moons on his shoulders, then the walls in the background, and the winged symbol on the front of the chariot.

Quatre, sitting there with Wufei and Heero, while the other two played, caught a faint smell, something that didn't fit with the odors already swirling around him, and unobtrusively began to sniff, trying to locate where it was coming from. It took him nearly five minutes of concentrating, and moving around in a rather off-hand manner to disguise what he was doing, before he thought to smell the cards he was holding.

It was coming from them. So what was it? It was acrid, and Quatre's nose, that sense organ that best triggers memory, placed it definitively from somewhere, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why it was so familiar.

He didn't push it, knowing that he, or his subconscious mind, would work it over and figure it out in the end, and that end would only come sooner if he wasn't pushing it, so he dropped it, and went back to the pictures, wondering about the different visual elements.

They passed the rest of the day finding various things to do. Wufei ended up having several books, two of which were not in Chinese, so the rest of them could read them, though the thought crossed Heero's mind that perhaps the only reason some weren't reading them was because they didn't want to give knowledge away. He'd seen Duo glance over the titles to the ones in Chinese with the same interest he'd paid to the ones in Standard. Heero also looked the entire set over, but only saw various treaties on war, all of which he'd read during training. He didn't need to read them again.

It took nearly half an hour, but everyone settled down again. Wufei, Quatre and Duo each were reading, Trowa was playing with his cards still, and Heero, like the trained soldier he was, took the opportunity to sleep.

They stopped once again for fuel, this time around mid-day as the truck ran low. None of the passengers were allowed out or into the tractor as the truck chugged fuel into its large tank. So they ignored the interruption of their dreary activities, and continued on with their assorted diversions.

This was basically how they passed the entire day, each overcoming the boredom that threatened to overwhelm. But it might be noted that each of the five pilots would, at some point, slip into a daze of thought, maybe staring off into space, maybe lying down on the bunks, and, though they would close their eyes, the others would catch the flicker of their eyes as they peeked at the world; they would note the very lack of motion, or the slightest hitch in the rhythmic rise and fall of their chests, an action so subtle that even they would have difficulties believing it.

As the clock ticked towards night, they again prepared for sleep, using the ever gaining cold to rearrange the bunks. Quatre got first watch, and as he lay back, arms behind his head, his eyes bright in the darkness, the mystery of the smell hit him. He knew where he'd smelled it, exactly when he had come across it before.

So, almost two-and-a-half hours into his watch, nearly midnight, he crept off his cot, and, using all the skills of stealth he could muster—and even if he were not the best among the pilots, surely the least among their number could be counted among the greatest anywhere else—he went to Trowa's side in the near-black. Knowing better than to shake him awake, or to raise his voice at all, his pale hand reached for the sleeping boy's where it lay on top of the blankets. Carefully, and very lightly, the gentlest of touches, he swept his fingers over the palm, using only his pads.

"Tristan." His whisper was just a hint of sound as he knelt by the cot. When the boy did react, and woke up, it was immediately apparent, his hand shooting up to grip Quatre's forearm and his other hand grasping something hidden under the woolen blankets. His piercing green eyes, no more than dark blobs, focused after the barest moment of confusion on "Quinn's" composed face as, in spite of the darkness, the blonde's halo of hair nearly glowed above him. When he recognized him, his tensed body relaxed, the hand holding on not letting go, but the harsh grip loosening.

"Quinn." A nod from 04. A flash of dark eyes as Trowa checked the extents of the trailer, noting the dark shapes of the other pilots, the only thing revealing where they were as they slept on, and the snores of various other occupants to further set them apart. "It's not my watch." There was an implied question hidden in the statement. Quatre shook his head, just a little, and it was small in the night.

"No. I had a question." Trowa looked at him, waiting patiently. "How'd you do the cards? And how do we use them?" It got a startled widening of Trowa's eyes, both of which were revealed as he lay sideways on the cot. The blond could see him registering the words, and the implication behind them. A slight smile glanced across the taller boy's face as he felt the barest glimmer of satisfaction that someone—one of his companions, and hopefully for the future, one of his team—had noticed.

"Solvent. To use them..." He focused in hard on Quatre's face, "to use them, you just do. Set them with—" he cut off, not wanting to say too much, though he knew if anyone had overheard what had been said so far, they could figure it out. Quatre got it, nodding his head "yes" as little as he had shook it "no" a minute ago.

"Okay. Thanks." He gave a smile, easily visible despite the dark, and Trowa thought he might also have winked before the blond head moved off through the shadows on silent feet.

Sleep was slow to come for Trowa, but deep down, past his training, he welcomed the time to think, interrupted only by the breath as it left his new companions. His green eyes, shadowed from discovery in the pitch-blackness of the trailer, settled on Quatre, where his slight breathing, only barely off rhythm, gave away his position. These pilots, all of them, they struck a chord deep within the nameless boy's chest—as if, were he to ever find his name, whatever it may be, these companions would tell him that he never really needed it, not with them.

The thought was a disturbing one, but Trowa had never shied away from discomfort, and he pulled the thought, and the emotions, so very controlled where they sat like un-needed piles of gold in his heart, closer in his mind, to dissect, and understand.

Unmoving, there raged a quiet argument in his head, full of only half-understood things, hopes and dreams that, should they have crossed someone else's face, he could have understood, and, more importantly, used them, but in himself, they only brought up questions and partially seen emotions that gave him small flashes of insight, un-known to him before. He could feel a frown trying to take over his face, and he fought it, winning, and keeping his face impassive, even if no one could have seen it.

They both sat awake, the watcher and the one confused, but when Quatre got back up to give the watch over to Heero, and then returned to his cot to sleep, still Trowa stayed awake, listening to the even breathing of the others around him He noted that while there had been a very distinct difference—at least, to him—in Quatre's breathing while awake and sleeping, Heero's was indiscernible from what it had been before. His own, he knew, rarely changed at all. It was part of his mask, and his mask was only flawed to those who could see as well as himself.

As the time wore on, he let his thoughts drift back into their orderly channels, and after he did that, it didn't take very long for his mind to settle into a calm lull, and when it did, he fell into a deep sleep, where his subconscious, which didn't really have any say in the deductive logic of his waking mind, told him strange things, things that he would puzzle at, as much as he had the conscience thoughts the night before, when he woke to remember whatever he'd dreamt, and then, failing in his self-examination, he would forget them, and live the life under his feet.

Dawn, or what passed for it, came over them all: Worser, running through the trailer with a slab of metal and a wrench, drumming a smart tattoo across the already pitted surface of the scrap.

"Rise and shine, ladies." The pilots, coming awake only to sit straight up in their bunks, hands clenched on hidden weapons, watched from the end of the trailer, where they'd gathered themselves, as Worser did his performance.

He did know how to drum, and Reveille has never had a more enthusiastic round. "Come on, boys, today I get ride ya', so I wan' ya' nice and tired by the time we get in, meanin' ya' hafta' get up an' righta' 'bout NOW." The last word was a roar, making it completely impossible for any who had, by some miraculous occurrence, been able to ignore the drumming to stay asleep. Groans issued forth from different areas, and not all of them could be stated as coming from the trainees as the soldiers clustered at the front end were also forced to wakefulness.

One bold soldier, who the pilots had noted before because of his familiarity with the Lieutenant, gave forth a great stream of colorful words. Quatre watched in open-mouthed awe, Duo grinned shamelessly, Heero and Trowa ignored it, as they got up and began to move around, and Wufei just gave an inelegant snort, full of contempt, the closest response to any of the other trainees, who used their upbringing to _try_ to give the impression that the soldier was merely a bug, and not even worth their contempt. The soldier wasn't bothered, and gave a light grin, more awake than he had been before his swear-word lesson, when Worser tucked his implements of audile torture under one arm and burst into applause. Eventually the Lieutenant was satisfied that everyone was up, removing himself from the glowering soldiers' presence and returning to the cab.

It was only moments before all the pilots were sitting back where they had before, the bunks re-arranged into their normal order; they sat there, and looked at each other, as if they were waiting for one of them to speak first. All of them were content for a least a few moments more before Quatre, in the interests of fellowship, and a true desire to further their possible comradeship, cleared the silence and his throat as one, the forced noise pulling the others' eyes to him.

"So what should we do today? We still have about nine hours left." Nine hours before they started again. Nine hours before their mission went back into real time, not this slow dragging that always came before action. He wouldn't even call it the calm before a storm, because it wasn't a true calm, not even when it was described like that. It was a sick dread that fell over the world, filling everyone with the same feeling of sick anticipation. Storms could kill, they could maim and destroy. _Just like us_. He fought against the urge to give a snort of caustic laughter.

"We?" Quatre knew, had to know, that there was not really malice or resentment in Wufei's voice, but he responded to the tone nonetheless.

His voice came out in as close to a snarl as he would ever let it go. "Yes, we. You know why, too." Vague, as it always was, but they understood. They'd been ordered to this. Another snort of disgust attempted to escape. But the short, stunted conversation stopped there. The blond wracked his brain, trying to come up with something that would teach them about each other—and wasn't as boring as sitting through Calculus—again. His mind, in its search, was drawn back to the Corps, holed up somewhere, repairing and polishing, whiling away the time with the festivals and the tempestuous weather that always plagued this time of year. If you were in the equatorial zone, you dealt with hurricanes and tornadoes, or sudden snows and blistering heat. He lost himself to the thoughts of his friends in the Corps, and when he had last seen them, preparing for the harvest festival. That stopped him, and a smile spread across his face. They were all from different cultures. It could work. But how to approach it...ah, that would work. He wiped the smile off his face. Another sarcastic thought crept through his mind when it didn't just disappear. No, that would be too normal. The smile would brighten: happy thought, thinking about something that makes a cheery response. Then the brow furrows, and the eyes pucker, the lips draw into an annoyed frown. Perfect acting, a defense against any eyes, a blind to hide what was really happening, automatic after training, and life.

His voice, when he spoke, was equally perfect, a blend of amusement and annoyance, and jealousy. "Hey, you know what Rashid is doing right this moment, Donald?" And inquiring look, asking whether this was important or not. "He's in the middle of a Harvest Festival." Act as if he were another friend, someone their age. "Dancing, music, food. Everything. And we're stuck in the back of a truck." That got a slight chuckle from the braided youth. He still remembered that one festival, apparently. "And imagine. I could have been there, too." Another chuckle, even though the other pilots weren't really interested. They still watched though, trying to become interested. They all knew it was in their own best interest to at least feign interest. The cover and all.

Quatre had a plan though. He called upon his ingrained manners, which he didn't think would ever leave him, much though he had tried to forget them all, and turned to Heero, sitting next to him on the dreary cot.

"Do you celebrate anything in the fall, Hy?" Just a shake of the head, but Quatre felt the slight flash of discontent and regret. But Heero wasn't guarding his words as he did when he was being himself. He added a word to the silent negative. "No."

Wufei entered into the budding conversation. "My clan does. It's called the Moon Festival." He stopped there, only going on when all the others looked at him, waiting. He was quiet when he started, perhaps for him a sign of hesitancy, though in others it would have been unnoticeable. "During the fall, the moon becomes brighter, because of it's proximity to Earth." They all knew that. Any colony pilot did. "The fifteenth of the eighth lunar month is when the festival is held. Children, grown up and moved away, will visit their parents, because the full moon represents reunion, and families, or couples, will go outside to watch the moon, and the moon fairy that comes out to dance."

Quatre's head tilted at him in inquiry. "Moon fairy?"

Wufei nodded, solemn. "Chang Er. She's trapped on the moon forever, with Wu Kang the woodcutter, and the Jade Rabbit."

"How did she become trapped there?" The blond could hardly be faulted for his curiosity. After all, the other pilots were also listening.

"Her husband, a great hero and tyrant, was once called upon because there were ten suns in the sky, burning all the crops. So he shot down nine of them, returning the world to balance." An elegant shrug punctuated it. "One of the gods gave him the Elixir of Immortality, but Chang Er, knowing that he would forever remain a tyrant, stole it from him, and drank it before he could. It made her float up to the moon, where she remains forever. It is said that she is most beautiful when the moon is so close, when she comes out of the crystal moon palace to dance."

"That's beautiful." There was a sad, somber look on Quatre's face. But there was also a smile, as he thought about whatever he might have been thinking about.

Duo, seeing the melancholy, felt the urge to ask about it. "What's the matter, Quinn?"

"Hm? Oh, just. Well, none of the stories I know are quite so special." A much happier smile replaced his slightly pained one. "Though, the ones I was told are fun, and full of adventure."

"Oh, yeah? Well, tell us one." Was he trying to cheer him up? Or was he genuinely interested? Did it matter?

"Well, okay. Umm." Quatre, in his thinking, pulled his bottom lip in while he thought, his eyes focused down on the wooden floor of the trailer. The other pilots waited, watching him. After a minute, his eyes raised up to them. "Okay. Here's one." He settled back into the cot, sliding down the little bit until he was suspended, cross-legged, in the middle of the dip. "Once, a long, long time ago, there was a sultan, who had thirty children, but only one son." They usually started that way in Quatre's family. "The son, youngest of them all, was spoiled, and had all he could desire, from jewels to servants to great beasts as pets." The others were all watching him, watching his face as he told the story. "One day, when the prince was eighteen years old, the sultan came to him where he was, sitting outside in the great gardens of the palace, eating fruit and taking naps in the bright sunshine." He paused, and was about to start again when a shadow fell over him, someone standing where they blocked the light. Looking up, he saw the rugged features of Worser, looking at him expectantly.

"Well? What did his father want?" His gruff voice had a smile in it, though the expression on his face was invisible from the angle that Quatre was staring up at him.

"Sir?" When in doubt...

"Oh, come on, kid, yer not just gonna stop there, are ya'?" And to further confound the pilots, he casually glanced around and, spotting one of the blanket piles tossed haphazardly about, settled his bulk surprisingly easily onto it, obviously waiting on Quatre to continue, looking at him with raised eyebrows—and quite a bit of raised flesh as well.

Quatre, quickly deducing that he had no choice, cleared his throat nervously and decided to ignore the officer as much as he could. Not much, but enough to allow him to continue. "Well, the sultan went out into the gardens, followed by his retinue, and stopped in front of his son. 'Son,' he said, 'you are in your eighteenth year, and you have yet to venture out into the world.' At this the prince nodded. 'Yes, father, you are right. For my entire life I have stayed within the walls of the palace grounds.'"

Quatre paused for a moment, glancing at the Lieutenant before he went on. "'Well, son, that is going to change. Should you want the throne, you must embark upon a quest.' The prince became startled. He was not an adventurer. 'A quest, father?' The sultan nodded. 'Yes. The prophets have decided upon it. You must journey into the land of the common man, and you must learn humility.'" Another pause, for breath this time.

"The prince, without hesitation, leapt to his feet, and, kneeling down in front of his noble father, proclaimed that he would go on this quest, and would return victorious over it. The sultan, waiting until the prince had raised himself from the ground, told him further that he could not take anyone with him, that he must do it alone. So, though the prince couldn't be anything but unhappy about going by himself, he believed that, as the prince, he could do it, or any other task set to him by his father." Quatre settled down again into his blankets, noticing while he did that the other pilots had done similarly, all "relaxing" into semi-reclining positions, even if Quatre could see their readiness should the need arise. Duo _was_ sprawled across one of the top bunks, leaning over the end of it to see Quatre, with Heero, who had shifted when the story had begun, seated underneath him, leaning against the trailer wall. Wufei was sitting in the lotus position on the floor in between the bunks, and Trowa was leaning up against the wall in the space between the bunk and the "sentry" cot. Worser was in the hallway created by the bunks past the cot Quatre was sitting on. It was an interesting group, to say the least.

"So the very next day, the prince left the walls of the palace, and walked down the great avenue that led from the enormous gates, into the city. He had no companions, nor any money, though, every day, he could go to the gates of the palace, and be fed. That first day, he wandered through the various markets, his clothing as plain as those around him, and watched the people in their daily lives. But he did not learn humility that day, as the sultan clearly saw when he came back to the gates at night fall, so he was not allowed back into the palace, and slept instead under the open stars, in one of the many back alleys of the city." Quatre watched his comrade's faces as he spoke, wondering if they were caught up in the story, finding the hidden meanings within it, or it they were really just dazing as they sat there. He shot a quick look at Worser, as well, but the man's face was, as usual, impossible to read. "The next day was repeated as the day before that, and the boy-prince learned no humility, and did not see any joy in the lives of those he watched. The days drew on, and soon, the prince had been outside the palace walls for nearly one lunar cycle. His appearance had lost much of its charm and grace, and the alleys he slept in failed to help his odor. Despite his lack of progress, he refused to become frustrated, and instead concentrated harder on those he surrounded himself with in the markets. Very rarely, now, did he venture outside of the market area, except to the gate, to eat, or to an alley, to sleep.

"Then, one day, he did just that, and wandered farther into the city, tracing the large roads and the tiny alleys. Near the midday, when the sun became cruel, the prince came across a small well, set into the wall of mud-brick, and he leaned against it, his garments hiding him from the sun as he sipped from the well bucket, now very used to the crude arrangement. He stood there until his legs became quite tired, and then he sank down to the ground beside the well, and stayed there for many minutes. After that indeterminate amount of time, a woman, laundry basket balanced carefully on her head, and a young boy approached the well, their intention easily discerned. Together, mother and child did the wash, and they were very happy while they did, so, when they were finished, and the wet laundry was again loaded up on the woman's head, the prince decided to follow the happy companions. He was not very careful while he followed them, but they were so joyful, they did not notice their extra shadow, and happily continued on.

"They had a small courtyard outside their home, and there, the prince rested his shoulders up against one of the walls, and watched as they hung the clothes and linens and cloths from the many lines, both of them smiling, singing and laughing. All of it puzzled the prince. There they were, constrained by society to do such manual labor, but they were happy with it, and so, he decided to speak to them.

"'Woman, why do you do your chores with such un-concern?' The woman, startled by him, merely stared at him for a minute, before she dutifully lowered her eyes in the face of a man. "Because, sir, this is my life, and I cannot imagine doing anything but giving to myself the gift of joy, and the enjoyment of my life.' The boy-prince stood there, a look of confusion concealing any other thoughts as they crossed his face. Shortly, though, he nodded, and left, only to go back to the well where he had first observed the woman and her son, and sank back down beside the well, to think. This was the first day that he didn't appear at the gates of the palace, and the sultan his father became worried, and began to pace restlessly across the floor of his great throne room. The day slipped soundlessly to evening, with no great disturbances for the prince, and so he stayed where he was, and kept awake the night, only to rise, stiffly, in the light of dawn, to venture forth once more to the palace.

"There, the guards gave out a great cry, and the sultan moved with great haste to his son, but when he got there, his son looked at him in a serious manner, his eyes steady. 'Father,' he said, 'I have not learned humility, as you asked me to, but I did learn something yesterday.' This stopped the sultan, who looked at him, curious. 'And what was that, my son?' "My father, I learned that, no matter what your place in life may be, you yourself are responsible for your own happiness.' And this father smiled at him, a great smile full of joy. 'My son, perhaps you have not learned the lesson I set you, but you have learned a lesson that could be deemed equally important. Come, my son, and break your fast with me.' And so, the son entered the palace gates once more, but from then on, he ventured out again and again, and continued to walk the paths of the common man, observing and learning about the human spirit." Quatre looked around that the boys he was hoping to find as his friends, and smiled, momentarily forgetting the OZ officer seated off to the side of them. "The end."

There was silence for quite some time, as each of his audience members thought about the story, but it was broken by Trowa, who spoke up in his quiet way from where he was seated. "I know a poem, it's nearly a story."

Duo, his head now resting on his arm instead of hanging off of the bunk, tilted his head so he could partially see the quiet boy. "Oh, yeah? Well, tell it then."

None of the others spoke up in agreement, or encouragement, but then, they didn't really need to, Trowa began to speak: "Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché,  
Tenait en son bec un fromage.  
Maître Renard, par l'odeur alléché,  
Lui tint à peu près ce langage:  
«Hé ! bonjour, Monsieur du Corbeau.  
Que vous êtes joli! que vous me semblez beau!  
Sans mentir, si votre ramage  
Se rapporte à votre plumage,  
Vous êtes le Phénix des hôtes de ces bois.»  
A ces mots le Corbeau ne se sent pas de joie;  
Et pour montrer sa belle voix,  
Il ouvre un large bec, laisse tomber sa proie.  
Le Renard s'en saisit, et dit: «Mon bon Monsieur,  
Apprenez que tout flatteur  
Vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute:  
Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute.»  
Le Corbeau, honteux et confus,  
Jura, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus." His voice was smooth, somehow conveying the right inflections without really changing the tone. Duo laughed at nearly every line of the poem, a merry sound, and Quatre smiled, recognizing the message in it, and also the actual story, which he had heard in his childhood.

The last two pilots had no real reaction, but then, Quatre wasn't really expecting any, and let it go. It was when Worser cleared his throat, a grating sound, that his presence was even remembered.

"What's that mean, kid? I don't speak French." The pilot's heads all turned towards him, three of them registering surprise, the last two, no visible emotional response whatsoever.

Duo, as Quatre was beginning to see was his wont, broke the slightly strained silence. "I don't know it in Standard." He looked at the other's faces. "Does anyone?"

Trowa shook his head, as did Heero. Wufei, from his position at the very back, simply replied with a "I do not." The blond boy smiled sweetly at the Lieutenant, and began to recite the poem in Standard.

"Master Crow sat on a tree,  
Holding a cheese in his beak.  
Master Fox was attracted by the odor,  
And tried to attract him thus:  
"Mister Crow, good day to you.  
You are a handsome and good looking bird!  
In truth, if your song is as beautiful as your plumage,  
You are the Phoenix of this forest."  
Hearing these words the Crow felt great joy,  
And to demonstrate his beautiful voice,  
He opened his mouth wide and let drop his prey.  
The Fox seized it and said: "My good Sir,  
Know that every flatterer,  
Lives at the expense of those who take him seriously:  
This is a lesson that is worth a cheese no doubt."  
The Crow, embarrassed and confused,  
Swore, though somewhat later, that he would never be  
tricked thus again." Still smiling, he went on. "It's the retelling of an Aesop's fable by La Fontaine."

Worser nodded. "Thanks, kid."

Quatre just smiled a little more, and turned to the two pilots yet to offer anything. "Well, since it seems it's story time, would either of you care to tell one?"

The braided pilot shook his head, the braid going down in a straight line towards the ground. "Nah, not me. I don't know any good ones." His grin flashed at the blond, but Quatre though he could see the edges of some other expression wanting to cross his face.

He didn't want to push, so instead, he lowered his eyes to the pilot sitting on the bunk below Duo. "What about you, Hy? Do you know any stories?"

Heero was silent for a moment, his arms crossed over his chest, his back resting against the side of the trailer. He spoke in a quiet voice, but there was that note of force in it that Quatre had noticed before. "I know another fable."

Worser, settled down so nicely on his pile of blankets, gave out a short little half-laugh. "Let's hope 'sen Standard, huh, kid?"

The hidden face turned to the Lieutenant. "It is."

"'K then."

There was a short nod, and he then told his short fable. "One day, a wolf met a large, well-fed dog. The dog wore a large, heavy collar around his neck, so the wolf asked, 'Who feeds you, yet makes you wear such a heavy collar?' 'My master,' the dog said. 'I would not be you,' The wolf told the dog, 'not to wear your master's collar, no matter what he fed me. The weight of it would spoil the taste." After he finished, silence settled down once again, until Wufei broke it, even going so far as to open his eyes.

"Where's the moral line?" He looked at the blue-eyed boy, his black eyes nearly accusing.

Heero shrugged, an odd-looking thing against the wall, "That was all I was told."

"Well, does anyone else know it?" The Chinese pilot glanced around, but didn't look up at Duo, where he once again hung over the edge. But he was the one that answered, his voice soft, and sad.

"Half a meal in freedom is better than a full meal in bondage." Again, silence.

They all were content to sit there, but Quatre hadn't completed his mission yet—Duo hadn't told a story. He looked up the short distance to him, and met the other pilot's eyes. "Don't you want to tell one? I mean, surely you know at least _one_ story!"

Duo, wrapped up in his own defenses, could only smile, and not give in to the depressed air like he wanted to. He stared into the sharp eyes of the blond for nearly thirty full seconds, before he nodded, slowly, his smile straining even more. "Yeah, I suppose I do know some."

"Well, then, tell us one then." Quatre swiveled around in his dipping cot to look at his new backup—Worser, who winked at him.

"Okay." He didn't begin immediately, sitting there, perhaps collecting his thoughts as he stared down at the wooden floor. When he did look up, his face wore a bright smile, and his eyes twinkled. "Okay, here goes. This is a story Father told me, it's an old fairy tale, very old, over five hundred years.

"Once there was a poor little girl," Duo's voice was quiet, like his mind was really focused on something other than the story, "walking alone in the streets of the city, nearly bare-footed," he smiled at us, wryly, "she had lost the old slippers of her mother's that she had been wearing dodging two carriages, one she couldn't find, the other was stolen by a boy, who made fun of it's size, saying he could use it as a cradle, it was so large—and without a hat, even though it was horribly cold, and almost dark."

He paused a moment. "So the little girl walked, her feet blue with the cold, trying to sell matches. She had an old apron tied around her waist, and in the pockets were bundles of the matches, as were her hands." Another one of those odd smiles, which Quatre could only think of as being sarcastic. "But no one had bought any all day, and no one had taken pity on her and given her a penny."

"By the time dark came, bringing snow with it, she was a miserable sight to behold, shivering with cold, and terribly hungry. The beautiful snowflakes would fall on her curly blonde hair, but she didn't even see them." As he listened, the cadence of the words became, to his mind, less and less like the Duo he, admittedly, barely knew. They were more formal, without the smoothly sarcastic edge that haunted his normal voice. The farther into the story he got, the more Quatre began to think that he was nearly repeating the story from someone else, as if he had memorized the words, and was spitting them back out, complete with inflection, but surely without the facial expressions, because there were very few people that Quatre had ever seen with that particular expression of sadness, mirth and irony.

"The windows of the great house put large boxes of light onto the snow, and there was the rich smell of roast goose, because it was New-year's eve, and many were celebrating. She huddled down in a deep corner between two houses, one of which projected farther than the other into the square, trying to warm her feet. But that didn't work, and she couldn't withstand the cold, and she couldn't go home, because she had sold no matches, and surely her father would beat her. And it wasn't even that much warmer at home, because there were great holes in the walls, and the roof leaked, and the wind would howl through.

"As she sat there, her hands began to go numb, they were so cold. She thought, and realized that she had her matches—perhaps, if she lit one, it would warm her hands a little, so she pulled out one of her little bundles, and struck it against the wall, watching as it sputtered. It gave off light, like a tiny little candle, and she held her hand over it to absorb the small warmth of it. She was happy, because even the light seemed warm, as if she were sitting by a large iron stove, the feet of it polished brass, with a brass ornament on top. The fire burned, and seemed so beautifully warm that she stretched out her feet, and then, the match went out."

He smiled at us, and this time, there was that edge that had been missing in his voice in the smile, hard and unkind. "The match went out, leaving her with only the half burnt end. But she had more matches. Again, it burst into flame, and where the light fell on the rough brick, it became like a window, and she could see the room beyond it. There was a great table, covered in a table cloth whose bright whiteness rivaled the snow, and on the table cloth was a beautiful dinner service, and a roast goose, stuffed with apples and plums, the juices easily seen as they gathered in the platter below it. Then, even more wonderful, the goose jumped down from the table and waddled along towards her, a carving knife and a fork stuck in its breast. And again, the match went out, leaving her with only the cold, damp wall.

"When she lit the next match, she was under a towering Christmas-tree, greater, and more beautiful than any she had seen through any window, even the rich merchant's. Thousands of taper candles burned along the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen on other trees, looked down upon her. Just as she stretched out her hand to touch the great tree, the match went out.

"But this time, the lights didn't go away, instead rising higher and higher, until they looked like the stars in the sky. She was a star fall, trailing a bright streak of fire, and thought, 'Someone is dying,' because her grandmother, the only one to ever care about her, had told her, before she died, that when a star fell, a soul was going up to God. She rubbed another match on the wall, and as the light fell around her, she saw her grandmother in its brightness. 'Grandmother,' she cried, 'take me with you, I know you'll be gone when the match dies. You'll vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the Christmas tree.' And she lit the whole bundle of matches, wanting to keep her grandmother there. The matches glowed with a light greater than the sun at noon, and her grandmother had never appeared so loving and beautiful. She took up the little girl, and they both flew to the brightness and joy above the earth, where there was no hunger, cold or pain, because they were with God.

"At dawn, she was still there, her face holding no color, her lips smiling, leaning up against that handsome wall. She was dead, frozen on the last evening of the old year, and the New-year's sun shone down on a corpse. Some, seeing the burnt matches in her hands, said she tried to warm herself, but no one could imagine the beautiful things she had seen, nor the glory with which she had risen into heaven with her grandmother on the very eve of New-year's day. The end." , re-phrased/told)

This time, the silence was just slightly horrified, as each absorbed Duo's last words. Quatre repressed a shudder. Freezing to death was one of the last entries on his list of "How I Wish To Die".

Duo just looked at them all, a mischievous gleam visible in his bluish eyes and an almost-nasty smile curving his lips.

Worser was the first to venture a comment. "You know, kid, your father needs to speak to a doctor, telling you stories like that." Wait. Father? Quatre could feel his brows drawing together, as he went through Duo's files mentally, because he knew that Duo had been stated as an orphan....wait, oh, yes. The Maxwell Orphanage. It was run by a priest and a nun. He didn't hold down the slight shaking of his head, knowing that it would be interpreted as being for some other reaction. Duo was _very_ good at bending the truth. First, with the part where he could have any name—because, officially, he didn't have _any_ name, and now the "father" comment. It was something that Quatre could certainly admire in the Deathscythe pilot, that learned ability to avoid a lie, and yet, lie with the truth.

He was drawn from his thoughts by the movement of Wufei in the back, as he stood up gracefully. "Well, I think that's enough of that. I think that I shall occupy myself with a book yet again."

Duo was quick to sit up as well. "Well, may I look them over, and borrow one?"

"That would be fine." The brown braid followed him a split second after he slid off the bunk to kneel by the one Trowa was sitting on as Wufei pulled out his duffle and they began to sift through it. Quatre turned to Trowa.

"Would you be interested in cards?"

"Sure." The Arabian glanced with raised eyebrows at the last pilot, receiving a nod, and the three of them settled down into the gap between the bunks to play, of all things, BS, much to the amusement of the soon-occupied Duo.

Worser, standing more gracefully than many would assume, played his eyes over the boys, and watched as they interacted, seeing them completely absorbed into their own little world, but each of them giving off the feelings of belonging, and he couldn't help but wish that when he was their age, he could have had such a group of friends.

He was already turned and on his way back up to the front, and so he didn't see the looks shot at him, or the slight, barely perceptible lessening in the tension as he left.


	3. Interlude

Hollow Regrets—Interlude

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To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

_W. H. Auden (1907-1973), epitaph for an unknown soldier_

It was dark when they pulled into the vehicle bay, and bitterly cold. As the truck settled down, the diesel engine leaving a rumble behind as it shut off, Worser came back through the connection, and went for the hatch, leaning down and unlocking it, then giving it a great jerk and sending it up the rails that traced the edges of the trailer's ceiling. A bitter waft of cold air hit all the passengers, making most of them shiver as they stood uncertainly, clustering closer together as the wind from the open bay bit through even their heavy clothes.

"Come on, kids. They don't bite." Worser hopped down the approximately four feet in his light jacket as if the cold were his natural habitat. The two pilots more used to warmer climes could only gawk at him in disbelief a second before they were both over to their duffels, tearing through them for sweaters and coats. So while all the other teenagers were getting down from the back of the truck to meet their new commanding officers, they were re-packing their duffels at high speed. It wasn't as if they didn't know how to; _in fact,_ it didn't take them very long at all, and before more than thirty seconds had passed since the last of the trainees and soldiers were out of the trailer they followed, to stand at the end of the line of fifteen other boys, dropping their duffels at their feet to grasp their elbows in plea to their own bodies for warmth, and waited.

There was a crowd of men in a rough group facing them. They were all, except for Worser, who, they were sure, used his sheer bulk to avoid the cold, bundled up, and looking almost more wide than tall with the fur linings and trim on their official OZ uniform coats. Quatre and Duo glanced at each other where they were shivering at the end of the line. Sure, they had been on the mission from the second they'd stepped onto the tarmac, waiting for their ride, but, as they stood there at dusk, in that freezing hangar, and saw the OZ officers, they were hit in the gut by just what their mission was. Those officers weren't the target.

Worser turned away from the group to face "his" trainees, stepping forward. "Well, this is th' end o' my command, but Commander Traggat here, he's a sonuva—." He was cut off by a barked "Lieutenant!", but he just grinned at the cadets and kept on going, perfectly skipping the profanity. "So's I feel _great_ puttin' you under 'em. And s'not as if I'm leaven' 'mediately, anyway." He swept his nasty grimace across the boys, noting the grin on MacEvens' face, even if he was visibly shivering, and the slightly sickened cast of Wright's, whose teeth were beginning to chatter audibly, which made him think that maybe the sickened look was more from the cold than the prospect of seeing him everyday for a while more. He just gave a slight, mental, insouciant shrug anyway. You can never win them all.

"Now stand and acknowledge transfer of command." There was an immediate straightening of spines as duffels, gripped in a half-hearted manner because fingers rebelled in the cold, dropped simultaneously to the ground with a thud and hands snapped to sides. Worser huffed and swung around to complete the ordeal.

* * *

In the underground base, the walls were carved from the natural rock, making it seem like they were in the tunnels of a giant worm. Even the walls in _space_ were square, making these seem completely un-natural. They had always made Worser uncomfortable, but it was a nagging worry that he could easily ignore. He watched as the cadets moved through the "guided tour" phase of the orientation, gauging reactions. These boys were his future commanders, and they would soon out-rank him. Planning for the future had always been a high priority for the soldier, especially his own future, and the best way to cover his ass was to see which ones he'd need the most covering around. And, of course, it was always a good idea to warp whatever they might think about him.

There were some who seemed to take an immediate disliking to the surroundings. Davies, a tall, sandy-haired youth, (whose parents were richer than God, which left Worser at a loss for the possible reasons _why_ the second son went into the military from that family,) seemed very intent on walking down the exact middle of the hallways, staying as far from the curved walls as he could. That Wong kid, he kept looking up, almost ducking, like he thought the ceiling was going to come down on him. None of the others seemed to find too much wrong with it, but they had been quite interested in it when they had first stepped into the corridors.

Worser, forced into waiting until they were settled before he could commandeer the "tour guide", (an ensign Worser didn't know,) to find his own quarters for his stay, trailed behind the cadets, where he watched them all, as they lost what relaxation they had gained from the long trip, and became stiff, aristocratic adolescents once again.

The lighting was a bland, yellowish tone, and it cast everything into washed out shades of their actual colors—what little color there was. The metal fixtures had metal shades. The beds had metal rails, and the chairs were made of metal, cold and un-yielding. Each room in the cadet dorms were identical, one bunk, with two ratty mattresses, a very small desk, only barely larger than that found in most schoolrooms, but one that had two chairs pulled up to it in a mockery of reality, (there was no possible way that two people could really truly study at a desk that small at the same time,) and a small sink, (which had never worked; the pipes stopped two inches above the cement floor).

The large group of youths kept into a small modicum of order, but they were soon beginning to disperse as each door they passed disgorged one or more cadets, those that were curious about the new "refugees". As they walked along, the lieutenant, looking at his data pad, would call out a name, and assign the quarters, leaving one and another "new" cadet behind him, until there were no more left following him. It was after they were all gone, off to their new closet-like rooms, that Worser approached him.

"I need ta' get ta' section 3A, level 14. Show me th' way, Lieutenant." There was weariness in his voice, nearly enough to slur his speech beyond recognition, but apparently, the young lieutenant had no problem.

"Certainly, Sir!" He swept his hand up in a salute for the required second before it landed back down at his side. "Right this way, Sir."

He kept going straight, past dorms Worser thought must be empty, due to the lack of kids being disgorged to view the ruckus what was the new cadets, and then up when they reached the stairwell, which Worser noted in passing that he needed a card and a code to get into. They climbed for three staircases, long enough for Worser to really _feel_ the duffel thrown over his shoulder, and came out, again through an unmarked, but locked, door, into quarters rather identical to those below them, though these contained a single bed, and, when he tested it, a working faucet at the sink. He thanked the lieutenant before he closed the door and slung the duffel onto the rickety bed, ran the water a minute, and washed his face, ignoring the dripping as he opened the duffel to dig around for a hand towel. Then he stuffed everything back into the canvas bag, tossed it into a corner, and ignored the squeaks the bed emitted when he settled down on it. Within two minutes, he'd gotten to that most blessed of all a soldier's needs: sleep.

* * *

Simulator runs started the next morning, bright and early, and all the pilots had to concentrate harder than they thought they would to not reveal the level of skill they really had. They were being run on Tauruses, and the runs themselves were elementary to them, simple things. They began at the very beginning, disregarding the vehement complaints of many as they began with the basics; how to correctly hold the grips, the start-up procedure, the amount of pressure used to correctly fire weapons using the hands of the suit. Endless stuff that was second nature—or even beyond that—to the pilots, and they had to do it over and over again and again, always keeping their scores out of the top ten percent.

It was even frustrating for them, because, most of the time, they didn't know the stats, or the answers when the tutoring officers asked those questions. For everyone but Heero, it hadn't even been in their training. And _he_ couldn't remember it; it had been such an insignificant part of his training, a very long time ago. They were all forced, separately, to study out of books and off data readers for the first three days while everyone else did the sims. And then, they had to play catch-up to the other trainees, the ones _not_ needing to go through the extra tutoring, and do it at a reasonable rate, not one so fast that they would stand out. The sheer boredom itself was enough to grate on all of their nerves, and they could do _nothing_ to alleviate it, because of their cover.

Their luck held out though, because they weren't all in the same tutoring sessions, so they didn't stand out as a group more than they already did for coming from the same installation, as well as the isolation they had employed on the journey to this one. Even better then not being grouped together, there were others who also didn't know, or couldn't remember, so they blended in better, and could gauge their progress against the real cadets, "memorizing" everything at approximately the same pace.

Slowly, as the days began to slip by, they began to use the many cadets around them to drift apart from each other, giving off the impression that though they may have grouped together in the unfamiliar surroundings of the trailer because of their shared origin, once they were back in the "normal" world of classes and sims and with a larger group of people around their age, they weren't necessarily a "group". They drifted apart, remaining acquaintances, but avoiding any situations where they would have to work together, and soon, in no more than a week, they were, for the most part, no longer sitting at the same tables during mess, or immediately gravitating towards each other when the entire cadet population congregated.

They knew they weren't suspected; their acting had been too precise, too refined for any to have found a chink in it, but still, to them, it seemed so very engineered. It was what they had been told to do, but the feeling of it felt wrong, just as this mission felt wrong, and nearly everything about it. None of them had thought it a good idea for them _all_ to be grouped in one place, and they had gotten to the point of being constantly on edge, wary of their surroundings, the people around them.

Duo, in his efforts to keep his self-proclaimed paranoia in check, had set up a monitoring protocol on all communications in, to, and around the base, using a word-filter to strain through the large mass. By their second day there, all of them knew the entire base, the blueprints accessed by Heero while doing "research" on the proper way to shut down a mobile suit. For the time being, that was all they felt comfortable with, desperate in their concern to not arouse suspicion. Actual exploration of the base would have to wait until someone by-passed the locked doors, and any preparations for the demolition work would commence after the periodical mission instructions were sent to Quatre, the one chosen, at the moment, to be the link between the operators and the pilots.

* * *

So, he'd be leaving with the next "shipment" of kids, huh? Okay. That'd be good. The sooner he was away from these teens, the better, 'cause they were driving him nuts. He'd already had to break up _three_ "duels of honor", two _fist-fights_, for those who'd insulted someone's family _beyond_ what would justify a duel. And he wasn't even an official officer. He shook his head as he made his way towards the mess. These were the upper crust of society, and they were, supposedly, better behaved than the lowly "commoners" who, according to these _perfectly_ informed, (his snort of derision interrupted him here, twitching his nose,) teenagers, had no honor, no manners, and no intelligence.

Frankly, he couldn't wait to get out of there. The halls seemed to be swarming with the brats whenever he stepped foot outside of his small room, and he was constantly on edge around them. He wrote it off to being still tired from the drive the first few times, but after the fifth, when he was forced to eat with them, he couldn't logically call it mere weariness anymore. It was something else, and it continued to bother him. That was why he continued to carefully watch all the students, whenever he could. He had no duties assigned to him, so he was perfectly able to spend massive amounts of time around them, following them to the different classes and sim runs and other activities, always on guard. Slowly, he began to settle his observations into a rough sketch. Of the group of cadets he'd spent the small amount of time watching in the trailer, he watched them even more carefully than he did the others, because, as he'd noticed before, there was what could almost be called a _presence_ around them, that delineated a space around them, marking them away from the others. And he wondered on the answers that MacEvens kid had given him. Mostly, he thought about way the kid had looked when he'd said he'd been ordered to join the OZ organization, and how it was his family.

* * *

The door slowly, silently closed behind the braided youth, not waking the sleeping kid left behind. The terrorist felt a fleeing urge to shake his head for such innocence, but didn't, held back by the constraints of his mission. He could only wish for the vain hope of peace, a message delivered in one of these night-time forays that would relieve him from this sickening mission. But then again, he _knew_ it was a vain hope, and he knew that when the time came, he would follow directions, follow the "orders" he received.

The rec room's door was slightly ajar, telling him that Quatre was already there; he would have left it open to keep a better watch. Duo didn't let that stop him from sneaking in without alerting the blond boy, though he was only half-way across the room before he heard the slick noise of a knife coming free from its concealed sheath. He relaxed from his taut "stealth" mode, and gave a slight chuckle.

"Caught me."

"One of these days you're going to end up with four inches of unforgiving metal buried in _some_ part of your body." Duo's smile broadened, hearing the wry amusement threaded through the exasperated scolding, and continued across the fairly large room to where the blond was sitting, his back misleadingly to the entrance.

As Duo came even with him, the slight greenish glow of the screen shadowed the pale hands fussing with it, and Duo's eyes were automatically drawn to that green glow, seeing not the lines of text and numbers and symbols, but the next phase of the mission in code, the code too complex for them to read straight, they had to feed it through _five_ different programs on both Quatre's little piece of electronic magic, and Duo's, pulled hastily from one of his baggy pockets, before they could read it, and then transfer it to the other pilots, during the few times when it wouldn't be suspicious for them to be seen together...like, across the exercise area of the rec room, or in the canteen, where the noise and the bustle would cover up the lip-reading, the hand-signals and the tapping of their own various brands of code.

The download didn't take very long, total time elapsed forty seconds, mostly from the jumping it had to do, and they began setting up the de-coding system, jacking in the cable that connected the two little hand-held computers, entering the codes allowing them to access the decryption protocols, and waiting the four and a half minutes until it was decoded completely.

* * *

Without the suspicion or intrigue that Worser already felt for the boys he'd sat with that little bit on the road, he wouldn't have watched them after they had arrived. But the...suspicion was too strong a word...the _oddities_ of them had captured his attention, and he watched as they slowly drifted away from each other, only the one with the braid—MacEvans—and the blond, whom he recalled vaguely as being something like Waters, seemed to keep up any sort of truly "friend"-type relationship.

They seemed to have been old-time child-hood acquaintances, and they knew many of the same people; it was natural for them to continue along the same lines, or even using the half-way precarious position they found themselves in as cadets to even deepen it to the level of _true_ friends. Certainly it seemed that way to Worser's admittedly poorly-trained eye. He had no experience, really, with younger people. He could judge an officer at fifty yards, could tell if he were a hard-assed bastard, or one who faithfully looked after the men under his command; he knew how to keep a frightened man fighting, but he didn't know anything "concrete" about teenagers, so he treated them just as he did any of his men, with, maybe, just a _little_ more teasing, hassling and general joking around, where they'd let him, these haughty _children_.

Those five boys though, they had caught him, in the way they seemed to work together, or _something_ like that, no matter that he hadn't seen them all together since they'd stepped out of the trailer. And the more he watched them, the more it became like that. Their actions seemed choreographed, with how they were never _too_ close, or ever worked together on projects, aside from the two he'd noticed as being friends. In fact, the more he looked at it, the more they seemed to practically _avoid_ each other. He stored that away with everything else he'd been slowly gathering about them, and went on in his self-assigned task.

* * *

He could see Duo out of the corner of his eye, could watch his fingers moving as they tapped incessantly, could follow the sweeps of his arms as he chattered with—or at, which he was thinking _far_ more likely—the cadets lined up in the rows around him in the large canteen. Heero kept his head down, listening to the general conversation of those sitting on his either sides, and across from him, even injecting comments here and there, playing up his own persona, trial though it was, of a shy, quiet student, as he watched the coded message as it played out, literally from the tips of Duo's fingers.

His comments would make him look up at those around him, making him lose the direct eye contact he was keeping on Duo's movements, but he was watching when he looped through the message the second time, and caught everything he needed to, giving his own signal, (a slight toss of his head, as if he were absentmindedly shaking the hair out of his eyes,) to show he didn't need it repeated again, and saw Duo's hands begin to move in a random pattern., shifting just that slight amount, still in tune with whatever bullshit he'd already been saying.

Even farther away from him, across the room, he saw Trowa playing with a butter knife. He was stabbing down at the table, in between his fingers, but he was doing it in a very good simulation of someone only partially proficient with a knife, _nothing_ like what Heero knew he really could do. The motions were slightly hesitant, and they were fairly far out from the webbing of his fingers. And the speed was fairly minimal, though it _was_ fast enough to make people gather around him. Heero watched it, a perfectly fine activity, with the attention it was garnering from others. For him, though, it wasn't an amusing distraction, it was an attempt to decipher the coding, quickly matching it up against his personal codex. Trowa was using the gaps in his fingers. He only had four gaps, plus the two on either side of his hand, so six numbers. He was going back and forth, randomly, one, three, two, four, six, two...Heero stopped watching it when he _saw_ the code, turning his attention back to his own table-mates with a suppressed sigh. Innocents, or close enough for it to sit ill with him.

And, according to the message, they wouldn't be _his_ responsibility. They were Wufei's. Of course, Duo and Quatre were the next out of here, but after that, it would be him and Trowa. He didn't bother to repress the snort he felt building in him, because someone had told a mild joke, and the snort would be seen as innocent laughter; Wufei could handle this base. Heero knew that Duo had already by-passed the doors, and made up some master keys, one for each of them. That was also in that message. He could pick up one from the inside light-fixture in the dorm's showers. Fifth stall on the right. He looked up again from his half-edible meal. They were so...young.

He knew that this entire thing disturbed his fellow pilots, too. They all, at some point, had voiced their opinion that this was, though necessary, something that disgusted them. They were on edge, the sheer stupidity of having them all in one place causing them serious paranoia, including him. He'd taken to sleeping so lightly that a single rustle of his room-mate's blankets would have him jerking upright, his gun already half out from under his ratty pillow. It disturbed him. And it was beginning to wear on the others as much as it was him. So it was a very good time for the next phase of the mission. Even with only two of them leaving, it would be so much better than all five of them as sitting ducks. Now, all he could hope was that he and 03, as he'd been designated by OZ (they used the designations now to give away as little information as was possible) would be leaving soon as well. Their deadline was slowly creeping up on them


	4. Chapter Three

Hollow Regrets—Ch. III

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One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of strength to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.

_Joe Darion, "The Impossible Dream"_

There were whispers coming from the rec room. Slight, even words that were too low to understand, that could only barely be distinguished them from normal night sounds, and then, it took a double check for them to even register as _talking_. Worser had to blink stupidly for a second. It was way beyond the point of curfew. Whoever was there shouldn't've been there. Ears trained in warfare, straining for a purchase into the whispered conversation, picked up something recognizable to the sound matrix. It was a giggle. A _giggle_. From the rec room.

Worser's thick eyebrows drew together, pulling skin from a diverse selection of wrinkles and folds, rearranging his features 'til they easily could've passed for some other crusty specimen of humanity. What the hell was a _giggle_ doing in the _rec_ room three-and-a-half-fucking-hours after lights out?

He'd find out. There weren't _that_ many girls mixed in with the cadets, but then—some of the boys were young and prepubescent enough to have made that noise. He was lucky with it being the rec room, because there was only one exit, so he didn't have to worry about sneaking up on whoever was in there, being heard, and scaring them off, because hell knew, he'd never be able to keep up with some fifteen year old git in training to be a soldier on the run. But he was already standing in front of the one exit. The door couldn't even claim to be cracked open, it was so close to being completely shut.

That didn't stop the murmur of voices from leaking out to him. He gently pushed the door open, letting it swing on the squeaky hinge, knowing that the harsh sound in the quiet night would make them stop—with nice, guilty expressions on their faces.

Or make them disentangle themselves. Worser cringed on that one. Adolescents. May God save him from ever having to deal with them again.

The squeak _did_ get their attention, and two pairs of wide eyes stared at him, and, thank God, it didn't look like they'd been doing anything as bad as he'd feared. When he got a good look at them, he was _almost_ unsurprised to find out who it was; the braided kid, MacEvans, and one of his friends, Waters. They were hunched over something, concealing it from his view, but he knew it had some sort of screen on it immediately, because he could see the greenish glow reflected on their hands and faces, and the white cloth of MacEvans' shirt.

The part of him that most feared the adolescents' purely scary behavior relaxed, even as the part of him devoted to his life as a soldier perked up a sleepy ear, opened a complacent eye, as he walked across the room. He just let his suspicious tendencies sit in the back of his mind while he dealt with the boys.

They had two hand-held games connected with a cord. That was it. With the guilty expressions plastered over their faces...

"What the _hell_ are you doing?" They jumped at the outburst, hands clutching the small electronics to the point where the screens began to flicker from the pressure. Their eyes may've been directed at the officer ever since he'd pushed the door open, but they sure weren't making contact with his own. He got the distinct impression that they each had chosen points somewhere in the vicinity of his forehead to stare at. It was the blond who finally gave up a timid answer.

"Sir...we...uh...we..." He got that far in a faltering voice, then the rest rushed out. "We were playing a game, because they said they were going to send some of the kids away tomorrow, and they didn't say which ones, just that it was going to be a random selection, and we didn't know..." He trailed off at the look Worser had on his face—that, or the one on MacEvans' though, his, and the kids expressions were being compelled by completely different emotions.

No, it was the one on Worser's, 'cause the kid was staring at him like someone would an angry, poisonous snake. The man didn't think Waters had even _looked_ at the other kid. God knew he could feel the perplexed/surprised/_anything_ look on his face as he looked at the miscreants. He let a laugh loose in his mind, but kept the look steady on his face. He'd been told _how_ many times in the past that there was no fuckin' way _anybody_ could read his face.

As far as their actions were concerned..._damn,_ but he was a soft touch, 'cause he supposed he could understand where they were comin' from. And they _were_ leaving at o'dark hundred in the morning...so it couldn't _really_ hurt to do this for 'em. That didn't stop his increasingly used chant, or prayer, he wasn't _really_ sure which, from voicing itself once more through his mind. _Never, never, ever, again._

A heave of his shoulders and a long moment with his eyes focused on them in silence, while they both sat where they were, nervousness written all _over_ their faces. But then, one of the beefy hands reached for a bulging pocket, revealing a data-reader. Worser squinted at the dim screen a moment before he gave another heave, which, if someone were stretching it, could _almost_ be labeled as somewhat related to a sigh, before he strode across the room to hit the overhead light switch. He didn't move back immediately, choosing instead to look at the pad, one hand cradling it, the other dwarfing the stylus as it dabbed at things across the screen. He found what he was looking for, and put the thing back into a pocket, leaving the overhead on as he went back to the boys.

They were still sitting down, dodging looks at each other as they awaited whatever response to their actions Worser might take. He took up a stance in front of them, legs slightly spread, like he had to brace himself to keep his bulk upright, and crossed his arms.

"You're both scheduled to go." He said it very simply, and he watched as first, their eyes widened, and then they looked at each other in relief. They still didn't say anything else, though, just waited for whatever else Worser was going to say. When he didn't, not immediately, they began to lose the slightly relaxed positions that they'd assumed at the good news.

He shifted his eyes to them both, back and forth, before he just heaved another sigh and, on the exhale, told them: "Okay, just get outta' here, and DON'T do it again!"

They jumped up and saluted him, speaking in unison. "Yes sir." Then they looked at each other, then at him, and "got out of there", taking only a split second to disconnect the games from one another, each electronic device finding home in a large pocket. After they left, Worser didn't stay very long either, going on with what he _had_ been doing before he'd come across them: he'd been on his way to _bed_, and _sleep_, 'cause if he were shipping off in the morning, like those two little numbskulls—even if, from his observations of them, they seemed to be, perhaps, a little more on the ball than many other kids their age he'd seen, and, recently, interacted with. But _God, _he'd be a hell of a lot happier with more than the three hours he was gonna' be getting.

* * *

He'd just _known_ he was right about the plan for moving the kids, and felt some slight amount of pleasure mixed in with the disgust he felt for his lack of sleep, when, the next morning, he was ousted from bed at some un-godly hour to, himself, oust the kids. Why the hell he had to help do it he didn't even _want_ to know.

Twenty-one of 'em, and _all_ of them grumbling about it as they hurriedly packed up "stuff"—which is what _one_ of them called the junk when asked, hurriedly rushing around to be on the ship before he got reamed by one of his tutoring officers.

At the boat, or ship, or whatever, in the docks...with the wind coming off of the water, and the pre-dawn, it was beyond cold. As he stood there, watching as they loaded up and settled down in one of the crew spaces, Worser couldn't wait until he could go to his own miniscule quarters—shared with three other men, sailors all—and coax some warmth back into himself. The standard issue uniform jacket, (all-weather, supposedly,) wasn't worth /shit/, in his opinion.

Luck seemed to be sorta' with him, 'cause it didn't take too long before he was allowed to do just that, and he made a lump under his blanket, falling to sleep to catch up on what he'd lost, ignoring the hustle going on that was merely a ship getting ready to embark.

* * *

Worser was on the main deck, heading for the stern of the boat, to watch the wake, the split of the water, with the white against the darkness of the water, when MacEvans, interrupted his "stroll". The kid was leaning up against the bulkhead in the passage, tossing a foam ball up and down in the air.

"Hey, Sir. You wouldn't be interested in overseeing a dodge-ball game, would you?" The kid gave him a cheerful grin, his eyes sparkling up at the lieutenant.

Worser, stopping, turned to frown at him, hands on his hips. "A what?"

The ball, still going up and down in the air, halted, held up lightly in one hand to show the big man. "A dodge-ball game. Me and some others—we want to play, but we need...uh...I think 'adult supervision' were the _exact_ words." He figured the kid must be gettin' pretty bored, if he had the time to play games. They were what, three days out now, and they weren't being kept busy enough already?

"So...in other words...you want me to baby-sit you." There was no question in the words.

The grin widened, and the ball went back to being thrown, up, down. "Yeah, but, come on, they're fun to watch..."

"Kid..." The annoyance was beginning to thread through his voice, but the cadet, not to be deterred, kept on.

"Oh, come _on_, Sir! We're even going to use the dust-balls!" The kid's aggrieved cry was punctuated by another thrust of the foam ball, this time at Worser's face.

* * *

Which is how, instead of watching the water's wake, he was leaning up against the padded walls of the gymnasium, converted to that purpose some long time ago from the hangar it _used_ to be, the great doors welded shut, watching twenty kids lining up, hands out to grab any of the ten balls, all in a nice neat line across the line that divided the "court", the colored dust swirling lazily in the bright light from the halogen bulbs.

He let them stand there for about thirty seconds, both sides having already huddled together for the mandatory "Okay, as soon as anyone gets hit, shoot the ball over to someone else", and laughing and joking around, before he let out a sharp whistle to tell them "go". Then there were balls everywhere, (they were using ten of them,) and laughter filled the giant room as bodies dodged back and forth, graceful from years of fencing lessons.

Lost in and amongst the laughter were friendly insults, banter thrown back and forth like the balls.

"...get you, Randy!" Followed by a ball thrown at the kid so-named, that he dodged a second before launching at the boy who'd thrown one at him, hitting him.

One of the balls bounced against the wall behind them, and began to roll towards the center, back to the team that had thrown it. "...get it, get it, get it...NOOOO. You let it get away!" The more daring sat at the line, waiting for the balls to come to them, but that was a high-fatality area, the no-man's land in between both sides, and not many lasted for very long that way.

"MOVE! You're gonna get HIT!" In the midst of the words, a hand would snake out to grab the offending person, dragging them barely out of the way of the dusty ball, letting the thing bounce once on the floor before the same hand would snatch at it.

"Ha! Missed me!"

God help 'em if they used a moment to celebrate getting missed, though, because it was an open invitation for the other team to demonstrate how well they actually _could _hit It was kinda' funny to Worser. The game revolved around hand-eye coordination, with a dash of tactics and strategy, mix in a little flexibility for the actual dodging...all in all, this game, the more he thought about it, was a good one for soldiers, really, because they had to use all those different skills, in the midst of a "battle". He'd be remembering that.

There was a ruckus as someone missed, and the taunt, "What, you're goin' for the wall _behind_ us?", 'pparently wasn't looked on with too much enthusiasm. But the kid who'd thrown it, someone the man didn't know, just gave an unrepentant grin, and bowed out gracefully a minute later when he was hit, because most of the other team was aiming for him.

They'd sweep forward to the line, tossing the balls, or throwing them with /force/ to hit their targets, and the numbers on each side were dwindling, until there were only five kids left on the "court". Worser noted, idly, that MacEvans and Waters were part of those still left, and began to watch them more carefully. Barely a minute later, he straightened up a little bit where he was leaning against the pads to watch them in earnest—just like they were playing.

Those two kids, they were playing against each other, instead of the rest of the kids, and for some reason, he thought that maybe they'd been doing that even before he'd begun watching...and they were cheating. But it was subtle cheating; the other kids left playing, all three of them, and the people on the sidelines, marked with large patches of chalk, hadn't noticed. The MacEvans kid...he was in possession of more than one ball, but it just _looked_ like he was able to grab a new one as soon as his hand was emptied. He'd kick them along with him as he moved, and kick it up into his hands as soon as he threw the one he held. And Waters, he was using his teammates as shields.

That's not what_ really_ caught his attention, though. They were moving very fast, with very refined movements, like they were dancing in and out of the others. And they were only aiming for each other. Like the other boys were moving obstacles, or, in Waters' case, moving bunkers.

That was it. The others left, all boys, would aim for _them_, and miss; even if the other three kids were throwing it from a supposed blind side, it'd miss, those two boys would dodge it, and it'd just look like luck, as if it were just an accident, it was so damned casual. After another five minutes, which was a _very_ long time in this game, it was just the two of them, and they were even _more_ intent, their movements going a notch higher, as they were into the very grist of the game, no more hiding, the other kids no longer a distraction or a cover.

Now they were dodging wildly, and they both gave up all pretense of not carrying more than one ball as soon as they were the only ones left on the "field". They were _catching_ them when the other would throw a body hit, and would move, with their dodges, to more balls, using the movement to get them there. They had thrown the middle line rule out a while ago, too, and were all over the place.

It was the ball-chasing that caught one of them. As MacEvans was dodging, going for a ball, Waters anticipated him, and threw the ball to where he'd _be_, catching MacEvans in the stomach hard enough for him to exhale all his breath. But the blond didn't just count on that, he threw another two balls, one in each hand, getting him in the face and the chest as well, the chalk marks lined up in a near-perfect line, (though it _could_ have been a perfect line Worser didn't want to look close enough to really see.)

MacEvans looked stunned for a moment before he dropped the one ball he had, and simply started to wipe the dust off of his face. Then Waters was there, helping, and visibly, (Worser couldn't hear anything in the cheering of the other cadets,) began to profusely apologize for hitting him in the face.

Worser wasn't believing it was an accident. He'd seen the kid throwing mostly with his right hand, had even seen him _writing_ in one of the many "classes" he'd observed or had to baby-sit on. The kid was right handed, and he'd thrown that ball with his left. Just like many of the _other_ balls he'd thrown with his left hand—that had been thrown accurately enough to head _straight_ for MacEvans' chest, only to be caught time and again. He'd _meant_ to hit his face. He hadn't just wanted him _out_, he'd wanted to be _positive_ about it. And the looks on their faces while they'd played...fierce, with grins that reeked of determination.

It was a personal competition, and they'd both been out to win, and they hadn't been going for anything else from the moment they'd stepped up to that line of other cadets. Maybe, with a stretch, it could be labeled as friendly competition...but he didn't think so.

And Waters must have some pretty big hands, t' hold two of those balls in one of them. Those balls, they were what, about five inches across, and he'd been running around for awhile like that, two in one hand, one in the other, switching them pretty damn fast, and hadn't dropped one. They _were_ soft balls, so they'd squish up a little, but not enough to make it very comfortable for a kid that size, he didn't think.

When they'd fawned over the two cadets enough in Worser's opinion, he pushed his shoulders off the pads. "Come on. Tha's enough for now, I think. 'Sides, s'time for mess, so clean up!"

As they filed out, Worser watched the two who'd "won" walk out in companionable animation, Waters still apologizing, it looked like, and MacEvans just cheerily waving it off. They _both_ had large hands, about the same size, though MacEvans' were much more slender, looked like they were longer in the fingers, more delicate. He could feel a grimace on his face for thinking that. _Delicate. That kid ain't that, that's for _damn _sure._

There was some good-natured grumbling, but they went, and about ten minutes later, twenty clean boys, back in "street-clothes", emerged from the locker rooms that were adjacent to the gymnasium and the pool. He looked them over quickly before he nodded to them, and they rushed out the door for the mess. He was glad that he didn't have to follow them. They'd have someone _else's_ adult supervision there.

One of the last out the door, MacEvans stopped for just a moment, giving him a wide grin. "Hey, man, thanks for watchin' the game for us!" He didn't stay after that, but turned on his heel and, _dry_ braid trailing behind him, something that stuck with the lieutenant, because he'd thought they were taking showers, scampered off after the other teenagers.

* * *

Worser slapped another of the nasty bugs on his arm. The smear it left was only partially satisfying, because he knew it wouldn't be very long before an equally nasty welt was raised, and he'd have yet one_ more_ place that itched like the damned. How the hell the suckers got out to the middle of nowhere he had _no_ idea, but here they were.

The moon was shining, sliding in between the clouds, dotting the ocean's small waves. It looked like a discarded snake-skin, long after the snake had molted, and the skin dried, with small valleys and ridges, in a slightly diamond-shaped pattern, shiny here, shadowed there.

The big man's arms seemed even more muscular where they rested on each other, the weight of his upper body making them press down hard on the metal railing. He was standing in the shadow of the command tower, just by the over hang that marked the entrance up to the officer's mess. With the moon's light, though, so very close to full, he could see clearly. When he turned to lean against the railing, he could see the bright colors, though they _were_ more muted, with silvery tones to them, instead of the neon brightness they usually were, that marked the fire-extinguisher beside the hatch.

Despite the brightness of the moon, despite the lack of shadows, Worser didn't see the boy as he walked up to him. To Worser, he simply _wasn't there_ until he spoke. "What, can't sleep either?"

The lieutenant jumped up, away from the railing, turning towards the aft of the boat, only to find MacEvans leaning calmly against the railing next to where he'd been relaxed a moment ago. The boy shot him a wry smile, his eyes nothing but dark spots under the thick shadow of his hair. He had his arms crossed over his chest.

"Geeze, man, you need to take something for those panic attacks. Don't want you havin' a heart attack or something." Worser could only gape a moment, before his scattered thoughts pulled back together, and he was in the right state of mind to give a good rejoinder.

"Would'a thought a kid like you'd know better'n sassin' yer elders. 'Cause the only way _I'm_ havin' a heart 'tack would be kickin' yer sorry ass te' next Tuesday!" He gave his _own_ grin with his words.

MacEvans laughed, his arms clutching his stomach as he nearly doubled over. He stayed that way for a minute, straightening up and making a big deal of wiping away imaginary tears—imaginary because Worser could tell, in the flash of the moonlight, that his eyes were dry. His voice was still tinged with laughter when he spoke. "I _like_ you, sir."

Worser snorted as he turned back to lean against the railing once more, about a foot away from the kid. "And why on _Earth_ would th' opinion of a piss-ant like you, be of any 'portance t'me?"

"Hey, man, you'd be amazed!" There was a note of the "con man at the festival" in the kid's voice. The one that said, here, sir, step right up, you know, I'll bet you I can guess your weight and your birthday, and if I get it wrong, why, I'll give you _back_ your money, sir, and, you know, just for grins, I'll give you five bucks, on top of it! And they'd say it all without a breath. The kid had it, even in that little bit, he managed to convey that...oiliness.

So Worser just snorted, and they stood there for a while, slowly moving into identical positions, their backs against the hard railing, (though, in _far_ different areas of their backs because of the height difference between them,) their arms crossed over their chests, their feet braced on the metal deck, their eyes lost in the darkness, but someone looking at them would have no doubts that they didn't see whatever it was they were looking at.

The large man finally sighed, his arms dropping to his sides as he turned once more to face the ocean. The kid stayed where he was, but watched the man when he moved. The slap of the water on the metal of the hull merely accentuated the despondency that seemed to envelope them both. "You know, kid, what is this world coming to that we have to spend so much time, and effort and money to protect _children_? When did children become the greatest targets?" Worser couldn't tell what was in his own voice, whether it was a mixture of contempt, and anger, or if that contempt, that anger, was only an overlay of the despair he was feeling, somewhere in his barrel-sized chest.

He heard a slight noise beside him, almost silent, lost in and amongst the noises of the ship and the sea, slight even as the whispering breeze that swept through the higher points of the ship and created a background whistle that gave a depth to the night. He thought that the noise must have been a sigh.

"You know, sir...I..." The boy trailed off, to become once more just a shadow, unsure of his words and his welcome in speaking them to such a rhetorical question...though the question almost _begged_ for a response.

"What?" But there wasn't an answer for the longest time, some minutes, even, and Worser, wanting to know the opinion of one of these children themselves, turned more towards the boy, and repeated his word. "What?"

The boy, still leaning backwards against the railing, forearms crossed, the skin itself hidden under his turtleneck, designer, Worser was sure, just shook his head, and, eyes still unseen under the fringe of his bangs, just spoke, voice low. "Nothing, sir. I—." He shook his head again, violently. "Nothing at all."

Uncrossing his arms, and using his elbows, he pushed off from the railing, coming to stand solidly, all weight on his feet, in a graceful move. "'Night, Lieutenant." He gave a cheery wave over his shoulder, already moving away in the darkness.

"'Night, kid."

* * *

After the boy left, Worser stayed there, lost back in his own thoughts. What was it about that boy that struck a chord somewhere in him? Both of them, really. MacEvans, and his shadow—or perhaps it was the other way around?—Waters. If what he'd seen this afternoon on the transfer roster was right, he'd be seeing a lot less of MacEvans, because he was being shifted. So it _might_ even be safe to say he'd not see him again at all. Because with that kid in the middle of nowhere for awhile, and Worser himself getting dropped in South America...And really, lowly lieutenants didn't see space pilots all that often, did they? So it was looking like, if he wanted to get deeper into the mystery that was those two boys—all five of them, from before, truly—he'd have to go through Waters...

And _that_ boy had none of the spunk that the MacEvans kid did, that was for damned sure. That little blond boy was just about as docile as they could come, which made him think more and more that of the two of them, it'd be MacEvans doing the leading...though—it'd been Waters, not MacEvans who'd won that game, and it _hadn't_ been won through sheer determination, like he'd thought it'd have to be, those two had been so involved in the competition. That was it, too. It wasn't a _game_, it'd been a competition between the two of them, a challenge that had gotten...it'd been finished, that was all he could really tell. And Waters had been the one to do it.

But he'd thought that when he'd first seen it. It didn't add up. Why would two boys, supposedly, from their files, boys who'd known each other for quite sometime, be in such a fierce contest, _and_...with the amount of time it'd taken Waters to end it with those three balls...they hadn't _played_ much together, because they didn't react to each other's moves like they knew them, from long association.

He rubbed his eyes as he stood there. Maybe the sea spray was finally making them sting...or maybe he was just getting tired. _Or old_.

* * *

With the water's depth here, it was too deep to drop anchor, but they didn't really need to. They only needed to stay with the surfaced submarine, as dead in the water as they, so that the cadets could transfer over. It left their complement at forty. Forty kids, and almost four-hundred men. There were nervous gestures abounding as the cadets leaving—nineteen of them—learned where they were going. It wasn't a _new_ idea, by any means, but there wasn't any general public knowledge of the under-water environments, so Worser was sure that learning that they would be _staying_ on one was quite a feeling. Thinking about it, he thought it was probably the safest place in this war. Perhaps it _was_ full of soldiers, but it was also, without a doubt, the easiest to hide place on the entire Earth.

So it made perfect sense to drop kids off there, the next step in this nearly ridiculous evasive dance.

Worser was leaning on the railing again as they unloaded. The bright sunlight shone down and delineated everything into crisp lines between light and shadow. It reflected off the water, making the sunglasses he wore absolutely necessary in his opinion, and creating an almost too-real feel to it all. Everything was bright, white light, and there was no gray area.

He had to give a slight snort of derision for himself. Normally, he wasn't so contemplative, but recently...recently, he'd been questioning everything, not only with respect to general things, suspicious movements, or ridiculous situations—but all of it seemed to end up, lately, with a philosophical air to it. The worrying of the gray area. He shook his head. Just the thought of light and dark, the lack of gray area, made him wonder how many people were seeing this war that way.

But how could they really have any understanding of what was really going on? What would they be thinking if what the military _was_ thinking would happen, or was in the works of happening, came true, and they lost some of these installations.

He _had_ to shake his head at that thought. How could they really believe that _kids_, killing kids, would be a strategic move in this war? Sure, they were the next generation of mobile suit pilots, but those Gundams were decimating the _current_ generations just fine. _Gundams._

_Now, why the hell'd /that/ thought pop up there?_ Worser didn't shake his head, but the want was certainly there, to shake it, like he wanted to shake the volley of thoughts running around out. He stood there, leaning against the metal of the railing with only a few real cares in the world, and thought about the thoughts that had been coming to him.

Some of his suspicions...were either coming together, or getting out of hand.

He stayed there, still, as the kids filed down the gang-way, as it rippled a little in the movement of the sea. Watched as MacEvans sent a cheery wave over his shoulder, not looking, when Waters threw him a shout of farewell, goodwill, even.

But the blond kid didn't stay at the railing for very long. He was gone when Worser was done with his short jaunt of watching the braided kid, disappeared into the crowd. Worser, from where he was above them, and a little to the side, searched the crowd of kids there for the bright hair reflecting the sunlight, but he was gone. Funny how those kids did that, really, the both of them.

He shoved himself off the railing to head back to his bunk. The sunlight was startin' to hurt his eyes, and he'd had enough suspicious thoughts about children recently, he thought. Sleep...he could feel a smirk cross his face. Sleep was a soldier's commodity, wasn't it?


	5. Chapter Four

Hollow Regrets—Ch. IV 

——————————————————————————

You were a stranger to sorrow: therefore Fate has cursed you.

_Euripides, (484-406 BCE), Alcestis, 438 BCE_

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

_Desiderius Erasmus_

On the ship, the cadets spent more time than ever doing studies and practicing in the simulators. The officers were all tense, pushing them hard, making them feel the growth of the war. With no Gundam attacks in weeks, everyone was on pins and needles. It was in the very air itself—they were planning something big. The extra pushes began to make most of the students improve. The harder they were pushed, the better they became.

Worser watched them, in his suspicions, watching Waters, of course, more carefully than any of the others, even than those who surpassed him on the sims, which, while not being many, was still a significant percentage.

He usually stood somewhere in the top twenty percent, never going below thirty, and never above ten, very precise. Even when the cadets were dragged out of bed at two A.M., grumbling and bleary, to run the sim again. Waters' score was an eighty-five. And for all that he _had_ been sleeping, for all of four hours, he looked much the same as he had after eight hours of sleep; he looked like he'd been up, or he'd had a jolt of caffeine, as fresh as he would ever be while he went to and from the sim-room. Worser, in the freedom he has a passenger, watched the vids they took of the cadets in the sims.

Always, it was the same with the kid. He'd climb in, backwards as they all did, and the cockpit would close up on him, just like it would on everyone else. But there were interesting things. Eyes that were older, but still vigilant, caught the speed with which the kid'd strap himself in, the moment of hesitation as his hand hovered for a split second over the start-up sequence, as if he were thinking about it...or maybe making himself take it "slow". The way his eyes tracked over the "battlefield" so much faster than any other cadet—and Worser'd pulled out the highest scoring ones' tapes, too—and how he sometimes seemed to nearly _feel_ the other suits.

Sometimes, his head would cock, and his eyes would center on something not really there, sliding down, and to the side, accessing some unknown part of his brain, a split second before he'd die, from a side he couldn't "see" on his screens. But Worser would truly believe that he _could_ tell that it was about to land. And that he deemed it the right time to fall, and get his exact score.

After he watched those sim vids, he knew he was right, that his possibly paranoid mind wasn't being so, here. The question that faced him, though, was what he was going to do about it.

Once again, it was the moon on the water that he went to contemplate over, a backdrop for his thoughts.

Five boys. Five Gundams. It matched up, perfectly. But they were so young, just kids. Kids who could still find enjoyment in games. And anyone who was smart enough to do what they were doing at this age...they must've had some _damn_ good reasons for it.

With his elbows propped up on the railing, he used his hands to scrub at his face. It was so screwed up. Four weeks. One month. That was how long he'd been watching them. That was a _hell_ of a long time for someone their age, usually. And they'd never _really_ blown their cover.

No, they hadn't blown it at all. Only to _him_...

For some reason, he didn't think that he was going to find any answers in the dark of night, anymore. But he had to try, dammit, 'cause four weeks...

He felt a shiver run down his spine. What was he going to agree with? The idea that killing...that _murdering_...

Or...was he to agree with the ideals he saw, had always seen, in the Gundam pilot's fight?

Too bad the moon didn't speak. Or give advice. 'Cause he sure as hell needed it right about now.

It wasn't talkin' though. The burly man straightened up, pulling his arms up to the top of the railing, and standing, braced, while he puzzled through the myriad thoughts that had recently come to settle in his mind. The more he sorted, the more he knew what was, not necessarily the _best_ option, but the one that fit the most with his conscience. He wasn't liking the lose-lose situation, though.

He could almost feel the slump of his muscles as he left for his bunk, squished into the sardine can he was slowly recognizing as quarters. Clouds even came over the moon, to reflect his mood, and he couldn't help one more glance at the ocean the second before his head ducked beneath the deck.

* * *

Worser found the blond standing on deck, staring at the wake where it peeled off behind them. "Hey kid. Don't ya' know it's rec time?" Worser leaned his meaty forearms on the top rail, and knocked his booted foot in between the bottom two. 

"Sure I do. But they don't notice if I'm not there, so why should you?" There was a bitter key to his voice, something that the man hadn't heard in any of the many hours he had spent in the teen's company. It raised his eyebrows for him.

"'Cause someone's gotta keep an eye on you. Can't have you runnin' around on yer own. Might get inta' trouble."

"Maybe. But I like it here." Now there was a quiet sadness in him.

Worser, confused for a moment, looked around him at the grayness of the ship, the only spots of color the people on it, (though there were none on deck, all of them at their posts, in the superstructure, or below decks, doing the same thing,) and the few spots of color that ruined the sheer grayness of it all, before he looked where the kid was looking—at the water below them. "You like the water?"

Waters looked up at him. "Well, don't you think it's appropriate, with _my_ name?" There was a smile on his face, but when he looked back at the water, it was a sad one. "Besides...the water, here, where it falls away from us...it makes me think of the past, how, when you've passed it...so much of it gets left behind."

The kid's head was just at that right height to let him rest it on the cold metal of the top bar, without even having his forearm there. His hands, when Worser glanced down, were gripping one of the wires of the guard-rail in a tight fist, hard enough to make the knuckles white. He didn't think that it was the most comfortable looking position he'd seen.

He could see the boy's face, just a little, because of the way it was turned, and the smile on his face was bitter and sad.

"You know, kid, you're 'bout as cheerful as a cold, wet rag right now!" He tried to project something other than the slight annoyance he felt, but the way the kid glanced up at him, his eyes shadowed just the slightest bit by his light hair, he thought that the attempt must've fallen flat, from the expression he got.

Dark eyes, blue-green in the bright light of the sun, regarded him seriously for a second more, before turning once more to the sea. His voice was just a low, melancholy whisper. "Sorry."

The lieutenant studied the boy out of the side of his eyes, before he, too, looked out at the water. He had to broach the subject somehow.

He'd tried thinking about how to phrase what he now knew, but when he looked at it in his head, he'd decided that there was no way to say it other than just saying it. Like all the times when he was serious, he lost the slurred, accented speech that so went with the image he presented. "I figured it out, you know. I know what you are."

The boy stiffened beside him, and the movement in the corner of his eye made Worser turn to look at him full on. He only stayed stiff for a moment before he relaxed into a position much like the one Worser'd kept throughout the small conversation, though his foot stayed on the ground, and his arms rested on a lower rail.

"We knew you would eventually, you've been watching us so carefully." He sighed. "Care to list off what gave us away?" He paused a second to shoot the man a wry smile. "Aside from the...uh...obvious."

Worser studied what he now _knew_ was an extremely dangerous terrorist, and couldn't see anything more than a young man who had the face of some young angel. He echoed Waters' sigh, shifting his regard out to the softly cresting waves of the sea. He'd opened his mouth to speak when the boy's hand snaked out to grab his wrist, silencing him with the strong grip, though his fingers couldn't reach all the way around the meaty arm.

"Hold on a moment, would you?" So Worser waited, watching, fascinated, as the boy reached into his pocket and brought out a gold-chased pen. Holding it in his hands, he took off the cap, unscrewed the tip and shook it upside down, until a small electronic device slid out of the end, telescoping out, apparently. He held the pen, and began to press a series of miniscule buttons that went along one side of it, until a green light turned on. He then reassembled the pen, and put it back in his pocket with a nonchalant air.

"There, that bought us some space." There was general unconcern in his voice. He simply wasn't upset or worried or even scared. He just was. "So what gave us away?"

Worser looked with new eyes at the small boy standing there. "Ahem. Actually, I thought something was off with you just about from the start. There were lots of things, things that I had to have been already watching for in order to see." He halted for a moment, and thought about the things he had seen while watching that group of boys.

"Your acting was amazing. All of you act as though this were your life. Any mistakes you've made, they only add up to anything if you're already suspicious, and not just suspicious of you, but of anything at all. In fact, I can't think of one, single incident that would've given it away completely. It was all little things, added up and totaled to something nearly ridiculous."

"It was all actions, all responses, and even those were split-second, a moment's time." He paused another second. "You know what really began to confirm it? All of your hands."

"Our hands?" When Worser looked at him, he could see the puzzled frown pulling at the kid's face.

"Yeah. Just look at them." A hand was held out to the sea, the fingers spread wide, the palm facing up. "Look how large they are, for your size. And the strength of them. The worn calluses...all of that, it's not... It doesn't add up, unless you consider that last, most bizarre track."

They stood there, the air relaxed, almost, as the blond kid looked at his hands, even exploring the muscles of each one with the pads of his fingers. Then he sighed, his hands folding together on the railing, one on top of the other. "What else?"

Worser could only shake his head. "Well, you did the sims." He shook his head when the kid opened his mouth to say something. "Yeah, I know, you were careful...too damned careful."

Waters grimaced, with a snort. "Only sometimes." Then he shook his head, somewhat absent-mindedly, his thoughts somewhere else. "I don't think that all the mistakes we made would go over well with any of our superiors."

Again, the boy got a surprised look from the OZ officer. "Superiors?" Since when did terrorists do things strictly under orders? Though, he certainly couldn't be called an expert on terrorism, now could he?

"Well, how _else_ are we supposed to get the backup and information we need?" If the kid could be clear on the logic, there, Worser supposed he'd have to follow.

"So you get orders?"

This time it was the kid who turned to study the person next to him. "I suppose it doesn't matter if you know anything else. If you haven't told anybody yet, you probably won't." A slight break. "And I don't suppose it really matters anymore either." The white of the wake drew his gaze once more. "Yes, ordered. Each of the pilots have their own 'mentor', I suppose you could almost call them a controller...they're the ones who gave us the suits, and trained us. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you anything else, because there isn't really much more I know."

"So you guys work independently? I thought you were a team. You acted like it, most of the time."

A wry shake of the head, tinged with melancholy. "That's all it is, right now, an act. We haven't known each other very long at all. We didn't even know that there were other suits until we came to Earth. After we landed, we slowly met one another, until we began getting coordinated missions." A genuine smile traced its way across his face. "You should hear the story about how...oh, never mind. But it does make a good story." There was a puzzled look on his face, perfectly observed by Worser. 

"Oh, well." The kid looked at his expensive watch. "I don't think we have time for much else, now. Maybe later."

"Why's that? Why're we outta time?" Surely he could get something interesting out of this kid. 

"Oh, just give it a minute, you'll see then." Again, a small smile, only this one seemed colder somehow.

Waiting games...he could deal. He settled back down onto the railing. "So, kid, what's your real name? Or is Waters it?"

The blond head tilted at him, curious. "Do you really want to know?"

"Sure, kid. Who wouldn't?"

There was a soft laugh. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. My name..." He trailed off for a moment, before picking it back up. "My name is Quatre Winner."

It didn't register for some few seconds, but when it did, he could feel the frown as it pulled his angle of view to face the serious features of the kid beside him.

"Winner, as in _the_ Winners?" A billionaire terrorist. Geeze.

"Yeah, those Winners." Quatre grimaced. "I don't like to talk about it."

There was the silence of everything but the waves and the wake, where it slapped against the ship. Worser mulled over the little he knew, wondering about the many questions these _children_ raised in him.

"Why would you fight? Why would any of you fight?" The wrinkled skin of his face pulled together in a deeper frown.

Quatre would have answered, but an explosion rent the air, and a shudder could be felt through the ship.

Worser's head whipped towards it, but Quatre only sighed, eyes focused on the horizon, and whispered: "Sorry". Worser, hearing that, turned back to him, looking at his pinched profile.

"That was you, wasn't it? That was the completion of your mission." Nothing but resigned sadness. He'd made his choice before he went to sleep last night. _Lose-lose. But maybe...maybe these kids can make a win out of it somewhere._

It took a moment, but Quatre finally turned his focus. "Yes, that was my mission. As 01 would say, mission: complete." He gave out another sigh, and turned away from the sea. "Come on, we have to get to the roof of the command tower...while avoiding the mess that's going to be in the actual tower. The fire is going to be on deck soon. And the fuel tanks will only stay contained for another five minutes." He gave the man standing by him a concerned look. "I really hope you can climb."

Worser just stood still for a moment, as his thoughts caught up with the boy's words. Then he had a thought of his own to mull over. "Did anyone survive?"

Quatre, who didn't want to leave him, looked up into his face and considered what answers he might give. But he was tired of lying. "No, I don't think anyone survived. The design of the incendiary charges took advantage of the formation of the ship, spreading easily, helped by the sheer quantity of ordinance distributed throughout the ship with string detonators and chain-reaction triggers. I was very thorough." But he heaved a sigh. "And now, even if they _were_ alive...well...I disabled the communications room...there won't be anyone coming to help."

His only response was a weary nod of the grizzled head. "How did you isolate the fuel?"

"I'll tell you, but we really have to get off the deck. I have a ride, but it's going to be rather sticky. The only place that will be above the water line by that point is the top of the command tower. And then, we need to be off and away before the fuel goes." He was futilely tugging on the 'tenant's arm, but even with the training he'd probably had, if the stocky man hadn't wanted to move, Quatre wasn't the one to get him to.

After staring at the kid in front of him for a spare second, Worser nodded hard, once. "'K, kid, lead the way."

It didn't take them more than two minutes to get up the tower, because, sure, it _was_ a mess in there, but it there _was_ a straight line up, and then out a window and they were sitting on the "roof". Another thirty seconds and there was a helicopter hanging over them, two lines snaking down, looking like the lines hanging on an MS.

They each grabbed one and were being winched up even as the 'copter was pulling away from the sinking, smoking ship. Just as they were getting level with the deck of the 'copter, the fuel went, the explosion rocking them around before the pilot stabilized the aircraft.

A man who intimidated even Worser for sheer size was there to haul them both in, and immediately the boy was surrounded by the half-dozen men lining the walls. 

The same giant of a man swept through the others, to give Winner enough space to move so he could find an empty jump-seat and collapse. The blond terrorist was visibly glad that the interference was too loud for anyone to begin asking the questions in anyone's eyes when they looked at the man calmly sitting beside him.

The boy's head fell back and hit the rest, and the huff of a sigh went through his body. Worser saw the movement, and he turned from the scrutiny of the men surrounding him, to the scrutiny of the boy sitting beside him.

They were above water for only fifteen minutes before a small island came into view, complete with palm trees. They settled down on the beach, all of them ignoring the stinging sand as it blew into the open hatch. The rotors slowly went idle and, giving out, a blessed almost-silence came down over them all. The men lining the walls had already surged outwards, joining the _other_ men that had already been at the beach, and turned nearly as one, mouths open to speak, but before they could, the kid held up his hand.

"Please, I need to do something. I need a secure 'com."

"Of course, Master Quatre." The giant pulled out a well used 'com, the buttons indented with the hundreds and thousands of times that they had been pushed, and handed it to "Master Quatre". The boy took it and rapidly entered a string of numbers, too fast for Worser to follow. It took thirty seconds to connect, but after that brief time, it did, and the screen went to snow, and then cleared, showing the dark interior of a MS cockpit, and MacEvans' face. He looked fine to Worser, though he did look rather careworn, with the hint of circles under his eyes.

"04." The voice was hard, tired, none of the joking that Worser had come to associate with the boy echoing through it, like it normally seemed, to, despite the few times when he'd been "caught" with a somber note in it by Worser's ears. The number was apparently both an acknowledgement and a question.

"02. I have a mission extension. I discovered the location of another base. What's your current position?" Quatre's voice was also worn, but it too was all business.

"I'm in the North Pacific, heading towards the JAP sector. Do you need exact coordinates?" The blue eyes bored out of the small video screen, and Worser, looking at them, was unsurprised at the hardness of his voice. It seemed as if it were only a pale reflection of what was contained in the boy's eyes.

"No, you should be close enough. It's in Northern Eurasia. Actually, it's about twenty clicks south of point SHR3. You should be able to pin it down from there, no problem."

"Okay." His arms moved around, his hands barely out of view. He must've been doing some reckoning on his computers. "Yeah, I'm about an hour away."

"Yes. See you later, 02."

"K, then I'm clear." He was clearly about to sign off, his attention shifting away from the screen, but Quatre spoke up again, his voice a little strained around the two words.

"02."

"Yeah?" Maybe his disconnect wasn't located next to the screen, because, even though he had that note of, "I was _just_ outta' here. What is it?" in his voice, his hand hadn't moved across the little screen, in fact, hadn't moved at all, they were both still resting, the muscles in the upper arm appearing lax.

"You should know....the installation...it's set up _within_ a civilian school." More hesitancy, as the boy in the cockpit stilled, which struck Worser as rather interesting, since he hadn't thought he'd been moving.

"_Inside_ a school?" The blond nodded, his face unreadable. A sigh could be heard over the line. "How many am I looking at here?"

His voice was a whisper Worser had to strain to hear despite his proximity. "Over three hundred."

The _former_ OZ Lieutenant couldn't really make out too many details, even with the clarity of the little screen, but he got the feeling that 02, or MacEvans, or...shit, what was _his_ real name?...didn't like the situation.

"There's no way to avoid it?" There wasn't really any anger, just disappointment and calm resignation, and Worser tried to imagine what the kid felt, since he obviously felt something about it.

"Not that I can see. But maybe there'll be something there." There was a pause. "Just, good luck, 02."

"Thanks. I'm out." Another sigh. "This really sucks, 04." The screen blanked, so the other kid couldn't hear Quatre's whisper.

"Yeah, it does."

Yet another dejected sigh, with the boy's head bowed, his eyes dark under his ragged bangs. Then, even as Worser watched him as one would watch a very large cat, with perfect attention, the boy's mask of calm settled over him, piece at a time, so that, when he looked up, he was all business, and the men surrounding him stood just that little bit more at attention.

"Okay. We need to move out of here. Where are the carriers?" The large man, Rasid, came forward, and Quatre handed back the com with a small smile of thanks.

"The carriers are on the other side of the island, Master Quatre." He gave a very slight bow, a mere inclination of the head. "We will need to load up the 'copter before we depart, but other than that, we are ready."

"Thanks, Rasid. I'll load it up, that'll be the fastest."

"Very well, Master Quatre." Again, that slight bow. "If you'd like...?" He gave a wave towards the cockpit of the silent 'copter.

"Yes, Rasid." The boy stood up, climbed out of the cargo area and opened the cockpit door, waiting patiently while the previous pilot backed out and handed the headset to the boy. Quatre wasted no time getting in himself, and even while one hand was buckling him in, his other was settling the helmet on, and then began to dance rapidly over the controls as the other, now finished with the harness, reached out and used a surprising strength to yank the door shut. Rasid ushered the men away from the 'copter as it began to warm up, the doors still open on the cargo area, and the co-pilot's seat empty. They all watched as the rotors began their rapid spinning, and, when they had reached that critical speed, the aircraft began to lift with nary a wobble.

It was possibly the best take-off Worser had ever seen in his long military career, but for some reason, he couldn't help but think that it must have been the kid's less-than-best, because he could clearly see in his mind the sheer exhaustion that seemed to fall over the boy whenever he thought he could grab a single second of peace. And that was all it was, too, a single second. But his thoughts were pulled away from the enigma he'd begun to associate with those boys oh-so-long ago, by the large man as he turned to face the ex-'tenant.

"So what would Master Quatre have us do with you?" There was none of the sneer or the derision Worser would expect of these men threaded through the deep voice. The lack didn't make Worser relax, though. As for the question—he could only shrug. _He_ didn't know what the kid was thinking. A huge sigh rippled through Rasid. "Well, if you don't know, I suppose the only thing to do would be to bring you with us." The men around him were murmuring agreement, and Worser could only feel pure amazement, that these fully grown _warriors_ could trust in their...the more he thought about it, the more he could only assume that the kid was the commander of this miniature army...so, in their _commander's_ choices, that they would "carry" the extra baggage that was currently _him_ with them, if only to find out what, exactly, it was that "Master Quatre" wanted of him.

And he couldn't do anything but _know_ that the blond had _something_ planned for him. From his observations, he knew that all the pilots had _very_ keen minds. And if he didn't miss his guess, Quatre's was the best out of all of them for plans. So he had an ace hidden somewhere, some seemingly harebrained scheme that, he was sure, would be the work of pure genius. Now, if only _he_ knew what _his_ part in it was.

All of this thought led up to him, being led by the bevy of men around the rim of the island. He enjoyed the scenery while he was doing it, and they reached what he presumed were the aforementioned carriers, within ten minutes. The boy was sitting on the sand in front of one of the closed cargo hatches. He stood up and brushed off the back of his trousers when he looked up from whatever he'd been doing in the sand and saw them approaching across the beach.

When they got closer, Worser, looking down, saw that it seemed to be a random doodle, of spirals and other shapes. Something a kid would do, if they were bored.

The blond head nodded to the big man, Rasid. "I saw Sandrock in that first one, next to the helicopter. I'll take it."

"Yes, Master Quatre. What do you want to do with him?" The rumbling voice coming from behind him made him want to look back at the man, but he didn't.

"Oh." Ragged wisps of hair swept across the kid's face as he shook his head, eyes closed, and one hand raising to rub at his forehead. "He'll ride with me, I think." Eyes opening, their dark gaze looked up the long way to his subordinate's face. "I'll need to talk to the others." Yeah...and Worser sure as hell'd like to know what was going on with him, too. He even had a vested interest in it. But he'd keep his mouth shut, for now.

"Okay. Then shall we move on?" Rather belatedly, Worser noticed how quiet the other men behind him were. He figured they must'a been focusing pretty hard on "things".

The kid moved towards the cargo hatch of the first airplane, and Rasid motioned to Worser to follow the kid, the big man moving in behind him. Groups of the other men went off to the other two planes, and now, all of them were talking animatedly. Perhaps their silence before were a sign of respect, or the quiet of soldiers waiting for orders? For some reason, Worser thought he was going to have either plenty of time to think about yet one more mystery, or he wasn't going to have to worry about it, soon.

Winner was waiting just inside the cargo hatch for them. When he saw them, he turned around to the bulkhead, and hit the controls for the hatch, shutting the three of them in the cargo hold, with the helicopter, and a large transport vehicle, the bed of it full, but covered with canvas tarps. Thinking about it, that must be "Sandrock"...which must be the Gundam, if he thought about it.

"Come on. We should really get out of this area." The boy began to head for the front of the plane, but glanced over his shoulder at the giant man behind him. "Are the other planes already secure?"

"Yes, Master Quatre." The deep voice was calm, and as unhurried as the man's steps.

"Good." By this time, he was on his way up the ladder, the two men following a little slower behind him. They were only halfway up when he reached the top and disappeared, only to re-appear a second later. "Strap in, I'm going to go get us underway." He didn't wait for them to respond before he was gone again, his footsteps making no sound on the quilted metal of the catwalk. Worser frowned over that when he himself made a _ton_ of sound as he stepped out onto it, Rasid equally loud. But he shook it off as just another quirk of them, and followed the indicating nod the other man gave him.

* * *

He was there for the beginning of the "conference". Quatre and "01" went down into the bowels of the mansion, taking Worser with them, while the halls became slowly, more and more utilitarian, revealing the underground base area. They came out into a room where the walls were covered in screens and terminals. Over on the far wall, in one of the upper corners, a small box-like icon was blinking, and Quatre's clear voice began the transmissions. Worser watched as the box expanded, showing the face of the other three pilots, the screens splitting, each of them sitting in a mobile suit cockpit, the blackness of the equipment shadowing them, small green, yellow and red dots back-lighting them from the various panels. 

"01, 04. We started without you." The green-eyed boy was quiet, unemotional.

"That's okay, 03. I'm sure if we missed anything important you'd tell us." The ex-OZ soldier wondered again, as he had vaguely in the past, if the blond had been engineered for diplomacy.

"Sure we would, but we weren't doing much serious stuff, 04." 02's braid was sitting over his shoulder, falling beyond the edge of the screen.

"Then there's no harm, is there?" The two boys that Worser was with had each taken up confident stands in the middle of the room, facing the screens. Worser, idly, wondered whether or not their eyes would be "focusing" on whomever they were speaking to at that particular point. He didn't know how the camera system was set up, and frankly, at this point, he didn't think it really mattered to him to know anyway.

"Let's get to the business of everything, then. The less time we spend on the band, the better." The blond's face wasn't visible to Worser, so he couldn't really see if there were genuine concern there or not—for that matter, with the acting jobs that they had pulled, he didn't know if he'd be _able_ to discern it as being real or not.

There was a short nod from 03, an equally curt one from 05. 02 just grinned, and the two standing in front of Worser...he couldn't tell. From the back, they were still.

"Okay, first: was everything a success, and I'm assuming nothing too horribly bad went wrong, since you're all here?" No play, no childhood in the his voice. The more he was around them...the more he felt sorry for them.

02 was the first to answer. "No. Got out of the first installation fine. I had my suit, so that was an easy job. The second installation, the one you pointed out..." There was a hesitancy, there, much as Worser'd noticed before, when they'd spoken in the tractor, and then, on the ship. That bitter pause where he, looking back, must have been choosing his words carefully. "The second one. Well, going in, 04 informed me that there could possibly be as many, or more, than three-hundred civilian casualties."

The pilots on the other two screens sharpened their gazes. Standing beside Winner, 01's back straightened. Sharpening seemed the only way to describe the sheer intensity of their eyes as they stared at 02, or wherever they _were_ seeing him. He still wasn't sure about all that, despite the fact that his curiosity was still worrying it around in the back of his mind.

They were silent, though, until 02 cleared his throat, and went on. "Took me about an hour to get to location, 'bout noon is when I arrived. When I got there, I used some of the long range sensors and scanners to scope things out. As it turned out, they were getting ready to move the cadets out, but they were waiting for dark. I took them out when they moved, and there ended up being minimal unnecessary casualties. Total count: eighty-seven." He gave a fairly nonchalant shrug, and an easy smile.

05 spoke up next. "After 01 and 03 shipped out, I started the set up of installation one. It didn't take very long, I was ready to detonate within three days. Then I waited until the time ran out, and when it did, I completed the objective, and left, as proposed. Count: forty-one."

"Mission was successful. Fifty-five targets." 01 nodded to 03.

The blond head in front of him nodded. "Then, with mine, total count is two-twenty-three. We missed eight out of the installations we had targeted." There were grim faces around the room.

02 broke the silence, as seemed to be his wont. "Are there..." He obviously trailed off, not wanting for some un-known reason to not voice the words allowed, when, since Worser could figure it out, the question was obvious.

But the pale white hair shook back and forth, negative. "No. Orders are, this was a success. We don't know how many installations we _missed_, but...we have new objectives, nonetheless. New objectives will be, henceforth, routed once more through the suits. 02, you have specific data that will be delivered by courier." There was a motion of one arm and hand towards 01. "05, your control will be in contact with you in the next thirty-six hours. 03, you and I have been told to return to cover, and let things blow over. 01—"he turned towards the silent boy beside him. "You already _have_ your orders." It got a short, silent nod.

"Then there's not much to go over, now."

The blond was turning away from the screens when someone cleared their voice

"Uh..." It was 02. He waited until Quatre was facing him. "What about him?"

"Hmm? Oh. _Him_." He twisted around to flash a grin at Worser, before going back to the screens again. "I'm going to send him to my father."

The other pilots didn't look very up to that idea. Again, 02 was the one to open the subject. "Quatre...is that such a wise idea, considering..."

He just sort of trailed off, but the blond standing in front of Worser didn't let the silence sit. "What do _you_ think? If I sent someone up to him, and said 'either you find him a place, where he won't get in trouble, or I kill him', no matter _how_ upset he is with me, there's _no_ way he'd not do it." He paused, and from behind, the man could only conjecture that he was looking down, now. "It's the only way I can think of...if you've thought of better..."

The braided kid's features frowned down at them from the wall. "Well, what about sending him to one of the mads?" But Quatre was already shaking his head.

"That's signing his warrant, and you _know_ it." The room echoed with nothing, everyone in their own thoughts, staring at each other or nothing.

Then, in an abrupt movement, 01 spun around and leveled a gun at the man in question. Where it'd come from, Worser wasn't sure, and right then, didn't really care. Frankly, he was too surprised to do much more than blink stupidly and raise his hands after a nearly ridiculous pause.

"Then we'll take care of it now. The situation is compromising us." Worser looked behind him to the blond kid, and beyond him, to the screen, where the only change had been a widening of 02's eyes, and a snort from 05.

Winner was looking at the two of them with a pretty darn cold look on his face, as if he were calculating some scenario in his head. But the kid seemed to be the voice of reason around here, so Worser thought he'd apply to him, rather than the still, cold eyes of the boy staring down the barrel of a gun at him.

"Oh, come on, kids. S'not like I wasn't a hazard you let go before." Hopefully, it wasn't _too_ much of a plea.

Winner tilted his head at them. "Although that _is_ true...the reasoning and situation is different, here. Just because you didn't give away anything important before doesn't mean you won't now." He paused for effect, raking one hand through his hair his eyes calm and measuring. "After all...you can identify all five of the pilots...there's not another person in creation other than the pilots themselves who can."

_Fuck._ Not good. Not good at all. What happened to the kid who didn't want to kill him? He glanced at the screen again, but the three there were just watching, even 02 was impassive, now. Worser focused his eyes on the blue ones of Winner, trying to keep up the appearance that these kids didn't scare the fucking hell outta him. "Kid, I let you carry out your mission even when I had time to turn you in. Even when I _knew_ what you were there to do. What fucking good would it do to say anything now? You've killed over two-hundred _children_, and _more_ personnel. I think, at this point, my saying anything would be rather useless."

He just got a raised eyebrow. Well, might as well dig it all the way down... "And...I couldn't even really go back to OZ, anyway...I'm dead, remember?" Damned if he'd be the first to look away. He concentrated on keeping eye-contact, and, more dubiously, ignoring the gun that was about three feet in front of his chest.

Maybe the pilots could tell how long they stood like that, but Worser sure's hell couldn't. He was more surprised than anything else when the gun lowered without any more words being spoken. The messy head of the kid still holding it—in a pretty tight grip, he noticed—turned to face the majority of the room, towards the other pilot and the screens.

"He's right. We don't need to kill him." Well, that was good...but there were _five_ of them. He took a quick glance at the screens, breaking eye contact, and when he focused back on the blond, the hard eyes were staring at 01.

Still meeting 04's gaze, 01 re-holstered his weapon, and all Worser could tell was that it was somewhere on his back, from his angle. 04 kept his gaze steady, and asked, "Are you sure, 01?" He got a nod, and turned to the screens. "Anything else?"

"Nah. That works for me. I mean—there's a pretty big gap between them knowing us, and them _having_ us, anyway." 02 was suddenly that boisterous kid from before, the grim look on his face forgotten. 03 gave a silent nod. He thought it was 03, but he couldn't be sure. The other Asian kid, besides the one who'd pulled on him, just sat there, a smile Worser wanted to characterize as a smirk on his face. He seemed to be leaning back in his piloting chair, his arms crossed over his chest, but from the way the shot was, and the backlighting from the instrument panels, he wasn't positive.

Winner gave them a nod, and turned to the man who was still standing there in a state of adrenaline. Very few times in his life had he faced his own death, and known he was facing it, and getting a scare like the one that kid just gave him.

"Well, Worser...I think this is goodbye, then." There was a smile accompanying the words, but the man thought it was more bittersweet than anything else.

Worser felt his eyebrows rise, almost out of his own volition. "Is it, kid?"

Again, that smile. "Yeah, probably, sir." There was silence from the rest of the room. "Rasid is outside the door. He'll take you where you need to go. Remember—if you don't know anything, there's nothing anyone would want you for. That's the safest road to take."

He met the stern gaze leveled at him from the blond kid for a minute or so, and then nodded. "Right." His grizzled head swung around the room, meeting the dark blue eyes of the Asian kid, and then, the projected ones on the screen. "Nice knowin' y'all."

Then, he went back to the door they'd entered by, and, after one last glance behind him, opened it and stepped through.

The End

* * *

There. Would like to put in some small notes. First, large, sloppy thanks to Miyabi and Crazy, because...well, what would one do without them? Second, disclaimer's in my profile, so there. Third, wow. HR's finished. Amazing. Really. Okay, I'm done now! 


End file.
